Class 
Book, 




A 



C(i#rt]^?__Jiiili 



CfiHORIGHT DEPOSm 



GPO 



II 




"the heavy dreams rolled gradually away." — Page 163, 



Sartor Resartus 



THE 



LIFE AND OPINIONS OF HERR TEUFELSDROCKH 



IX THREE BOOKS 



Thomas Carlyle 



Ml' in I'erv/dcktnzss, ivie herrlich iveit tmd hreit I 

Die Zeit ist uiein Vej-vidchtniss^ me in Acker ist die Zeit. 

Goethe. 



A R TIS T 'S EDITION. WITH NUMEROUS NE IV ILL US TRA TIONS 



Elizabeth S. Tucker 







NEW YORK : , ' ^ 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 
PUHIJSHERS 



^fy^K 






(iopmgbt, 1893, 



f i 



r> 



f 



CONTENTS 



c„.,.™h book I. 

I. Preliminary i 

II. Editorial Difficulties 6 

III. RExMINISCENCES II 

IV. Characteristics 23 

V. The World in Clothes ........ 29 

VI. Aprons ..<.-> 36 

VII. Miscellaneous-historical 39 

VIII. The World out of Clothes 43 

IX. Adamitism 49 

X. Pure Reason 54 

XI. Prospective ....... o,, o <,o . 60 

BOOK II. 

I. Genesis . . . . 70 

II. Idyllic yS 

III. Pedagogy 87 

IV. Getting under Way ..,....,,.. 104 
V. Romance 117 

VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh ........ 130 

VII. The Everlasting No 140 

VIII. Centre of Indifference 149 

IX. The Everlasting Yea .......... 161 

X. Pause ...... 173 



IV CONTENTS. 

BOOK III. 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Incident in Modern History ..,.,.. 182 

II. Church-Clothes 187 

III. Symbols 191 

IV. Helotage ... 198 

V. The Phcenix 203 

VI. Old Clothes 209 

VII. Organic Filaments 214 

VIII. Natural Supernaturalism 223 

IX. Circumspective 235 

X. The Dandiacal Body 239 

XL Tailors 253 

XII. Farewell . 256 



Appendix: Testimonies of Authors 265 

Summary 273 

Index .„. .oo »,..., o- o . c .. . 283 



SARTOR RESARTUS, 



BOOK FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY. 

CONSIDERING our present advanced state of cuUiire, 
and how the Torch of Science has now been brandished 
and borne about, with more or less effect, for five-thousand 
years and upwards ; how, in these times especially, not only 
the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely than ever, 
but innumerable Rush-lights, and. Sulphur-matches, kindled 
thereat, are also glancing in every direction, so that not the 
smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art can remain 
unilluminated, — it might strike the reflective mind with 
some surprise that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental 
character, whether in the way of Philosophy or History, has 
been written on tlie subject of Clothes. tX"^ 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect : Lagrange, 
it is well known, has proved that the Planetary System, on 
this scheme, will endure forever; Laplace, still more cun- 
ningly, even guesses that it could not have been made on 
any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our nautical Logbooks 
can be better kept; and water-transport of all kinds has 



2 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

grown more commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we 
know enough : what with the labors of our Werners and 
Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their disciples, it has 
come about that now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation 
of a World is little more mysterious than the cooking of 
a dumpling; concerning which last, indeed, there have been 
minds to whom the question, How the apples were got 
in^ presented difficulties. Why mention our disc|uisitions 
on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the 
Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a Doctrine 
of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies of Language, of 
History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of Intoxicating Liquors? 
Man's whole life and environment have been laid open and 
elucidated ; scarcely a fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, 
and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, distilled, 
desiccated, and scientifically decomposed: our spiritual Fac- 
ulties, of which it appears there are not a few, have their 
Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards '- every cellular, vascular, 
muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, Bichats. 
How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, that 
the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real Tissue, 
should have been quite overlooked by Science, — the vestural 
Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth ; which Man's 
Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and overall ; wherein 
his whole other Tissues are included and screened, his' 
whole Faculties work, his whole Self lives, moves, and has 
its being? For if, now and then, some stragghng broken- 
winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into this obscure 
region, the most have soared over it altogether heedless ; 
regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, as quite 
natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the 
plumage of birds. In all speculations they have tacitly 
figured man as a Clothed Animal j whereas he is by nature 



PRELIMINARY. 3 

a Naked Ajitrnal; and only in certain circumstances, by 
purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakspeare 
says, we are creatures that look before and after : the more 
surprising that we do not look round a little, and see what 
is passing under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, learned, 
indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany, comes to our aid. It 
is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolutionary times, 
there should be one country where abstract Thought can 
still take shelter; that while the din and frenzy of Catliolic 
Emancipations, and Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, 
deafen every F'rench and every English ear, the German can 
stand peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the 
raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, 
from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit 
his Ho ret iJir H err en tiud I asset's Euch sagenj in other 
words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, 
what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans 
have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence ; as if they 
struck into devious courses, where nothing was to be had 
but the toil of a rough journey ; as if, forsaking the gold- 
mines of finance and that political slaughter of fat oxen 
whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run 
goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crowberries, 
and be swallowed up at last in remote peat bogs. Of that 
unwise science, which, as our Humorist expresses it, 

" By geometric scale 
Doth take the size of pots of ale ; " 

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which is 
seen vigorously thrashing mere straw, there can nothing 
defensive be said. In so far as the Germans are chargeable 
with such, let them take the consequence. Nevertheless be 



4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

it remarked, that even a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold 
ornaments ; also many a scene that looks desert and rock- 
bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into 
rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not 
only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impas- 
sable barriers, for the mind of man ? It is written, "Many 
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." 
Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have 
his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man and 
that man, but all men make up mankind, and their united 
tasks the task of mankind. How often have we seen some 
such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured wanderer 
light on some out-lying, neglected, yet vitally momentous 
province ; the hidden treasures of which he first discovered, 
and kept proclaiming till the general eye and effort were 
directed thither, and the conquest was completed ; — thereby, 
in these his seemingly so aimless rambles, planting new 
standards, founding new habitable colonies, in the immeas- 
urable circumambient realm of Nothingness and Night ! 
Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should 
have free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty- 
two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever 
it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition in which pure 
Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes among 
us English ; and how our mercantile greatness, and invalu- 
able Constitution, impressing a political or other immediately 
practical tendency on all English culture and endeavor, 
cramps the free flight of Thought, — that this, not Philoso- 
phy of Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such 
Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in our 
lano:uao:e. What Eno;lish intellect could have chosen such 



PRELIMINARY. 5 

a topic, or by chance stumbled on it ? But for that same 
unshackled, and even sequestered condition of the German 
Learned, which permits and induces them to fish in all 
manner of waters, with all manner of nets, it seems probable 
enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the results 
it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite periods. 
The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting 
himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps 
discursive enough, is free to confess, that never, till these 
last months, did the above very plain considerations, on our 
total want of a Philosophy of Clothes, occur to him ; and 
then, by quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, namely, 
of a new Book from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weiss- 
nichtwo ; treating expressly of this subject, and in a style 
which, whether understood or not, could not even by the 
blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of 
thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, 
whether as judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has 
not remained without effect. 

'-''Die Kleider^ ihr Werdeit uitd Wirken (Clothes, their 
Origin and Influence): von Diog. Teufelsdrockh^ J. U. D. 
etc. Stillschweigen tind Cos*^^^. Weissnichtwo^ \%i\, 

"Here,"' says the Weissitichtwd^sche Anzeiger., "comes a 
Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-meditated 
sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, 
perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from the hitherto 
irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen and Company, with 
every external furtherance, it is of such internal quality as 
to set Neglect at defiance." . . . ^' A work," concludes the 
well-nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, ^'interesting alike to the 
antiquary, the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a 
masterpiece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged 
independent Germanism and Philanthropy (derber Kern- 



6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

deutschheit ^uid MenscJienliebe)\ which will not, assuredly, 
pass current without opposition in high places ; but must 
and will exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the 
first ranks of Philosophy, in our German Temple of Honor." 
Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, in 
this the first blaze of his fame, which however does not 
dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation-copy of his Book ; 
with compliments and encomiums which modesty forbids the 
present Editor to rehearse ; yet without indicated wish or 
hope of any kind, except what may be implied in the conclud- 
ing phrase : Mbchte es (this remarkable Treatise) auch im 
Brittischen Boden gedeihen I 



CHAPTER II. 

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 

IF for a speculative man, " whose seedfield," in the sublime 
words of the Poet, ''■ is Time," no conquest is important 
but that of new ideas, then might the arrival of Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk in the Editor's 
calendar. It is indeed an "extensive Volume," of boundless, 
almost formless contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither 
calm nor clear, if you will ; yet wherein the toughest pearl- 
diver may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with 
sea-wreck but with true orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first deliberate 
inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new Branch 
of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, 
was disclosed ; farther, what seemed scarcely less interest- 
ing, a quite new human Individuality, an almost unexampled 
personal character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 7 

the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as might be 
possible, we resolved to master the significance. But as man 
is emphatically a proselytizing creature, no sooner was such 
mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question arose : 
How might this acquired good be imparted to others, per- 
haps in equal need thereof : how could the Philosophy of 
Clothes, and the Author of such Philosophy, be brought 
home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of our 
own English Nation^ For if new-got gold is said to burn 
the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, much more 
may new truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought 
naturally was to publish Article after Article on this remark- 
able Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical Journals as 
the Editor might stand connected with, or by money or love 
procure access to. But, on the other hand, was it not clear 
that such matter as must here be revealed, and treated of, 
might endanger the circulation of any Journal extant ? If, 
indeed, all party-divisions in the State could have been 
abolished, Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant 
union; and all the Journals of the Nation could have been 
jumbled unto one Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes 
poured forth in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt 
had seemed possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort 
have we, except Eraser* s Magazine? A vehicle all strewed 
(figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, 
exploding distractively and destructively, wheresoever the 
mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any case, under- 
stood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, and 
inexorably shut ! Besides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes 
without the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh without 
something of his personality, was it not to insure both of 
entire misapprehension ? Now for Biography, had it been 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

Otherwise admissible, there were no adequate documents, no 
hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to circumstances, 
a special despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the 
while, shut out from all public utterance of these extraordi- 
nary Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without 
disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months ; and now the Volume 
on Clothes, read and again read, was in several points 
becoming lucid and lucent ; the personality of its Author 
more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that memory 
and conjecture could do, more and more enigmatic ; whereby 
the old disquietude seemed fast settling into fixed discon 
tent, — when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter from 
Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and 
associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not previously 
corresponded. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous 
matter, began dilating largely on the '^ agitation and atten 
tion " which the Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its 
own German Republic of Letters ; on the deep significance 
and tendency of his Friend's Volume : and then, at length, 
with great circumxlocution, Piinted at the practicability of con- 
veying *' some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, and 
through England to the distant West : " a work on Professor 
Teufelsdrockh " were undoubtedly welcome to the Fai?iily^ 
the National^ or any other of those patriotic Libraries^ at 
present the glory of British Literature ; " might work revolu- 
tions in Thought ; and so forth ; — in conclusion, intimating 
not obscurely, that should the present Editor feel disposed 
to undertake a Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath 
Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the- requisite 
Documents. 

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long evapo- 
rating, but would not crystallize, instantly when the wire 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 9 

or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallization com- 
mences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so 
was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of Heuschrecke's. 
Form rose out of void solution and discontinuity; like united 
itself with like in definite arrangement : and soon either in 
actual vision and possession, or in fixed reasonable hope, the 
image of the whole Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, 
into a solid mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the 
twopenny post, application to the famed redoubtable Oliver 
YoRKE was now made : an interview, interviews with that 
singular man have taken place ; with more of assurance on 
our side, with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, 
than we anticipated; — for the rest, with such issue as is 
now visible. As to those same " patriotic Libraries^'"' the 
Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent amaze- 
ment; but with his offer of Documents we joyfully and 
almost instantaneously closed. Thus, too, in the sure expec- 
tation of these, we already see our task begun ; and this 
our Sartor ResarUts., which is properly a " Life and Opinions 
of Herr Teufelsdrockh," hourly advancing. 

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such 
title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say 
more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, in simplicity 
of heart, what is here presented him, and with whatever 
metaphysical acumen and talent for meditation he is pos- 
sessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, open sense ; clear 
from the mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis of 
cant ; and directed rather to the Book itself than to the 
Editor of the Book. Who or what such Editor may be, must 
remain conjectural, and even insignificant : ^ it is a voice 

* With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or muffler; and, 
we have reason to think, under a feigned name ! — O. Y. 



10 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubtedly 
a Spirit addressing Spirits : whoso hath ears, let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give 
warning : namely, that he is animated with a true though 
perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of our Ances- 
tors ; and minded to defend these, according to ability, at 
all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a view to such defence 
that he engaged in this undertaking. To stem, or if that be 
impossible, profitably to divert the current of Innovation, 
such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cunningly planted 
down, were no despicable pile, or flood-gate, in the logical 
wear. 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any personal 
connection of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heuschrecke, or this 
Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway 
us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we venture to 
promise, are those private Compliments themselves. Grate- 
ful they may well be ; as generous illusions of friendship ; 
as fair mementoes of bygone unions, of those nights and 
suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and 
harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, though with baser 
accompaniments, the present Editor revelled in that feast of 
reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure ! But 
what then ? Amiens Plato, magis arnica Veritas; Teufels- 
drockh is our friend. Truth is our divinity. In our historical 
and critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to all the 
world; have feud or favor with no one, — save indeed the 
Devil, with whom, as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness, 
we do at all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at 
an epoch when puffery and quackery have reached a height 
unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even Enghsh 
Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their door- 
lintels A^o cheating here ^ — we thought it good to premise. 



REMINISCENCES. 1 1 

CHAPTER III. 

REMINISCENCES. 

TO the Author's private circle the appearance of this 
singular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little 
less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For 
ourselves, at least, few things have been more unexpected. 
Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaintance 
with him, seemed to lead a quite still and self-contained life : 
a man devoted to the higher Philosophies, indeed ; yet more 
jikely, if he pubhshed at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel 
and Bardili, both of whom, strangely enough, he included 
under a common ban ; than to descend, as he has here done, 
into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot 
but exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, 
was the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between 
us. If through the high, silent, meditative Transcenden- 
talism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency 
whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a certain pro- 
spective, and for the present quite speculative. Radicalism ; 
as indeed some correspondence, on his part, with Herr Oken 
of Jena was now and then suspected ; though his special 
contributions to the Isis could never be more than surmised 
at. But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less any thing 
Didactico-Religious, was looked for from him. 

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our hear- 
ing ; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered in, are 
to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge tumbler of 
Gukguk^^ and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, he 

' Gukguk is unhappily only an academical — beer. 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

stood up in full Coffee-house (it was Zti7' Grilnen Gans^ the 
largest in Weissnichtvvo, where all the Virtuosity, and 
nearly all the Intellect of the place assembled of an even- 
ing) ; and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look 
truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a black 
one might be dubious, proposed this toast: Die Sache der 
Arinen i7i Gottes unci Teufels Namen (The Cause of the 

Poor, in Heaven's name and 's) ! One full shout, 

breaking the leaden silence ; then a gurgle of innumerable 
emptying bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, 
returned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night; 
resuming their pipes ; in the highest enthusiasm, amid 
volumes of tobacco-smoke ; triumphant, cloud-capped without 
and within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful 
pillow. Bleibt dock ein ecJiter Spass- luid Galgen- vogel, said 
several ; meaning thereby that, one day, he would probably 
be hanged for his democratic sentiments. IVo steckt dock 
der Schalk? added they, looking round: but Teufelsdrockh 
had retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of these 
pages beheld him no more. 

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this Phi- 
losopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and powers. 
And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what 
lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of thine, so long 
and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest face we ever in 
this world saw, there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes 
too, deep under their shaggy brows, and looking out so still 
and dreamy, have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or 
else a diabolic fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was 
but the rest of infinite motion, the sleep of a spinning-top 1 
Thy little figure, there as, in loose, ill-brushed threadbare 
habiliments, thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole 
days, " to think and smoke tobacco,'^ held in it a mighty 



^ 



^^„. 





"UNDRR THOSE THICK LOCK'S OK THINE." — Page 12. 



REMINISCENCES. 1 3 

heart. The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee ; 
thou sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than 
another ; thou hadst /;/ petto thy remarkable Volume on 
Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear logically-founded 
Transcendentalism of thine ; still more, in thy meek, silent, 
deep-seated Sansculottism, combined wth a true princely 
Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of such 
speculation? But great men are too often unknown, or what 
is worse, misknown. Already, when we dreamed not of it, 
the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the loom ; and 
silently, mysterious shutdes were putting-in the woof ! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish biographical 
data, in this case, may be a curious question ; the answer of 
which, however, is happily not our concern, but his. To us 
it appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from 
the archives or memories of the best-informed classes, no 
Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered ; not so 
much as a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted 
thither by v/hat is called the course of circumstances ; con- 
cerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or pursuits, 
curiosity had indeed made inquiries, but satisfied herself 
with the most indistinct replies. For himself, he was a man 
so still and altogether unparticipating, that to question him 
even afar off on such particulars was a thing of more than 
usual delicacy : besides, in his sly way, he had ever some 
quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to 
divert such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits 
spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, 
without father or mother of any kind ; sometimes, with 
reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, and 
the vivid way he had of expressing himself hke an eye- 
witness of distant transactions and scenes, they called him 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Ewige yitde^ Everlasting, or as we say, Wandering 
Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a Man 
as a Thing; which Thing doubtless they were accustomed to 
see, and with satisfaction ; but no more thought of account- 
ing for than for the fabrication of their daily Allgeineine 
Zeitiing^ or the domestic habits of the Sun. Both were there 
and welcome ; the world enjoyed what good was in them, 
and thought no more of the matter. The man Teufels- 
drockh passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of 
those originals and nondescripts, more frequent in German 
Universities than elsewhere ; of whom, though you see them 
alive, and feel certain enough that they must have a History, 
no History seems to be discoverable ; or only such as men 
give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins : That they 
have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of 
gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist 
pressure ; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this 
phantasm world, where so much other mystery is. 

It was to be remarked that though, by title and diploma. 
Professor der All erley-W is sens chaft^ or as we should say in 
English, " Professor of Things in General," he had never 
delivered any Course; perhaps never been incited thereto 
by any public furtherance or requisition. To all appearance, 
the enlightened Government of Weissnichtwo, in founding 
their New University, imagined they had done enough, if 
" in times like ours," as the half-official Program expressed 
it, "when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving them- 
selves into Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been 
established ; whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying 
somewhat forth again from such Chaos might be, even 
slightly, facilitated." That actual Lectures should be held, 
and Public Classes for the " Science of Things in General," 



REMINISCENCES, 1 5 

they doubtless considered premature ; on which ground too 
they had only established the Professorship, nowise endowed 
it ; so that Teufelsdrockh, '• recommended by the highest 
Names," had been promoted thereby to a Name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the admi- 
ration of this new Professorship : how an enlightened Gov- 
ernment had seen into the Want of the Age {Zeitbedilrfniss)', 
how at length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we were 
to have a science of Affirmation and Reconstruction ; and 
Germany and Weissnichtwo were where they should be, in 
the vanguard of the world. Considerable also was the 
wonder at the new Professor, dropped opportunely enough 
into the nascent University ; so able to lecture, should 
occasion call ; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite 
periods, should an enlightened Government consider that 
occasion did not call. But such admiration and such wonder, 
being followed by no act to keep them living, could last 
only nine days ; and, long before our visit to that scene, 
had quite died away. The more cunning heads thought it 
was all an expiring clutch at popularity on the part of a 
Minister, whom domestic embarrassments, court intrigues, 
old age, and dropsy soon afterwards finally drove from the 
helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appearances 
at the Grilne Gans^ Weissnichtwo saw little of him, felt little 
of him. Here, over his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading 
Journals ; sometimes contemplatively looking into the clouds 
of his tobacco-pipe, without other visible employment : 
always, from his mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon 
there ; more especially when he opened his lips for speech ; 
on which occasions the whole Coffee-house would hush itself 
into silence, as if sure to hear something noteworthy. Nay, 
perhaps, to hear a whole series and river of the most mem- 



1 6 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

orable utterances ; such as, when once thawed, he would 
for hours indulge in, with fit audience : and the more mem- 
orable, as issuing from a head apparently not more inter- 
ested in them, not more conscious of them, than is the 
sculptured stone head of some public fountain, which 
through its bra^s mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and 
the unworthy ; careless whether it be for cooking victuals 
or quenching conflagrations ; indeed, maintains the same 
earn*est assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic 
Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened him- 
self perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that we could 
not then half guess his importance, and scrutinize him with 
due power of vision ! We enjoyed, what not three men in 
Weissnichtwo could boast of, a certain degree of access to 
the Professor's private domicile. It was the attic floor of the 
highest house in the Wahngasse ; and might truly be called 
the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the 
contiguous roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. 
Moreover, with its windows it looked towards all the four 
Orie^ or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts : the 
sitting-room itself commanded three; another came to view 
in the Schlafgemach (bed-room) at the opposite end ; to say 
nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were, dupli- 
cates^ and showing nothing new. So that it was in fact the 
speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh ; whercfrom, sit- 
ting at ease, he might see the whole life^circulation of that 
considerable City; the streets and lanes of which, with all 
their doing and driving (Thun tmd Trieben\ were, for the 
most part, visible there. 

'' I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," have we 
heard him say, '^and witness their wax-laying and honey- 
making, and poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur, From 



REMINISCENCES, 1 7 

the Palace esplanade, where music plays while Serene High- 
ness is pleased to eat his victuals, down to the low lane, 
where in her door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin 
livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see it all ; for, 
except the Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so 
high. Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy 
and Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: there, top- 
laden, and with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron 
and his household ; here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier 
hops painfully along, begging alms : a thousand carriages, 
and wains, and cars, come tumbling in with Food, with young 
Rusticit}', and other Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, 
and oTQ tumblins: out aofain with Produce manufactured. 
That living flood, pouring through these streets, of all quali- 
ties and ages, knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it 
is going? Aus der Ewigkeit^ zu der Ewigkeit hin : From 
Eternity, onwards to Eternity ! These are Apparitions : 
what else ? Are they not Souls rendered visible : in Bodies, 
that took shape and will lose it, melting into air ? Their 
solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense; they walk on the 
bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them and before 
them. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen 
yonder, with spurs on its heels and feather in its crown, is 
but of To-day, without a Yesterday or a To-morrow; and 
had not rather its Ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa 
overran thy Island.^ Friend, thou seest here a living link 
in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all Being : watch 
well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." 

'''' Ach, mem Lieber T'' said he once, at midnight, when 
we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest 
talk, " it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes of 
lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold 
exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of Night, 



1 8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

what thinks Bootes of them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs 
over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled 
hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain down to rest ; and 
the chariot-wheels of Vanity, still rolling here and there 
through distant streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed-in, 
and lighted to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and 
Misery, to prowl or to moan hke nightbirds, are abroad : 
that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick 
Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, under that hideous coverlet 
of vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable gases, what 
a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and hid ! The joyful and 
the sorrowful are there ; men are dying there, men are being- 
born ; men are praying, — on the other side of a brick 
partition, men are cursing ; and around them all is the vast, 
void Night. The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed 
saloons, or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness 
cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken into its 
lair of straw: in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-N^oir languidly 
emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains ; while 
Councillors of State sit plotting, and playing their high 
chess-game, whereof the pawns are Men. The Lover whis- 
pers his mistress that the coach is ready; and she, full of 
hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him over the borders : 
the Thief, still more silently, sets-to his picklocks and crow- 
bars, or lurks in wait till the watchmen first snore in their 
boxes. Gay mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing- 
rooms, are full of light and music and high-swelling hearts ; 
but, in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous 
and faint, and bloodshot eyes look-out through the dark- 
ness, which is around and within, for the light of a stern 
last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the morrow: 
comes no hammering from the Rabenstein ? — their gallows 
must even now be o' building. Upwards of five-hundred* 



REMINISCENCES. 1 9 

thousand two-legged animals without feathers lie round us, 
in horizontal positions ; their heads all in nightcaps, and 
full of the foolishest dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers 
and swaggers in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, 
with streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, 
whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. — All these 
heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little 
carpentry and masonry between them ; — crammed in, like 
salted fish in their barrel ; — or weltering, shall I say, like an 
Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each struggling to get its 
head above the others : such work goes on under that smoke- 
counterpane ! — But I, fjiein Werther^ sit above it all; I am 
alone with the Stars." 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance of 
such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might be 
traced there ; but with the light we had, which indeed was 
only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the window, 
nothing save that old calmness and fixedness was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons : most com- 
monly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether 
silent and smoked ; while the visitor had liberty either to 
say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional grunt ; 
or to look round for a space, and then take himself away. 
It was a strange apartment ; full of books and tattered 
papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable sub- 
stances, *' united in a common element of dust.'' Books 
lay on tables, and below tables ; here fluttered a sheet of 
manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap hastily 
thrown aside; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, coffee- 
pots, tobacco-boxes. Periodical Literature, and Bliicher 
Boots. Old Lieschen (Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed- 
maker and stove-lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, 
errand-maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the rest a 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

very orderly creature, had no sovereign authority in this last 
citadel of Teufelsdrockh ; only some once in the month she 
half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, 
and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) effected 
a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber as was not 
Literary. These were her Erdbeben (earthquakes), which 
Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than the pestilence ; neverthe- 
less, to such length he had been forced to comply. Glad 
would he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, or 
till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of doors : but 
Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and necessary of 
life, and would not be flatly gainsaid. We can still remem- 
ber the ancient woman ; so silent that some thought her 
dumb ; deaf also you would often have supposed her ; for 
Teufelsdrockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, would she serve 
or give heed to; and with him she seemed to communi- 
cate chiefly by signs ; if it were not rather by some secret 
divination that she guessed all his wants, and supplied 
them. Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, and 
swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence to 
the ear: yet all was tight and right there: hot and black 
came the coffee ever at the due moment ; and the speech- 
less Lieschen herself looked out on you, from under her 
clean white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered 
face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, almost 
of benevolence. 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance hither*, 
the only one we ever saw there, ourselves excepted, was the 
Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by name and expecta- 
tion, to the readers of these pages. To us, at that period. 
Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, 
crane-necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps suf- 
ficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, in dry 




•ONCE A MONTH SHE HALF I'ORCIBLY MADE HER WAV THITHKK, Wl'lH 
BROOM AND DUSTER." — /Wv 20. 



REMINISCENCES. 2 1 

weather or in wet, '* they never appear without their um- 
brella." Had we not known with what "little wisdom" tlie 
world is governed ; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the 
ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most part be but mute 
train-bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses 
and wilh'ng or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed 
wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, 
or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. What 
counsel to any man, or to any woman, could this particular 
Hofrath give; in whose loose, zigzag figure; in whose thin 
visage, as it went jerking to and fro, in minute incessant 
fluctuation, — you traced rather confusion worse confounded; 
at most. Timidity and physical Cold? Some indeed said 
withal, he was "the very Spirit of Love embodied:" blue 
earnest eyes, full of sadness and kindness ; purse ever open, 
and so forth ; the whole of which, we shall now hope, for 
many reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless 
friend Teufelsdrockh's outhne, who indeed handled the 
burin like few in these cases, was probably the best : Er 
hat Gemiith ujid Getst, hat weiiigsteiis gehabt^ doch ohne 
Organ^ ohne Schicksals-Giinst j ist gegenwdrtig aher halb- 
zerriittet. halb-erstarrt, " He has heart and talent, at least 
has had such, yet without lit mode of utterance, or favor of 
Fortune ; and so is now half-cracked, half-congealed." — 
What the Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, readers 
may wonder : we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, 
are careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of Teufels- 
drockh, which indeed was also by far the most decisive 
feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert 
that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a 
Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return ; 
for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little out- 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational 
friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. 
On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what 
reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our 
Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and, as he fondly ima- 
gined, far more practically influential of the two, looked and 
tended on his little Sage, whom he seemed to consider as 
a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, 
Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, 
besides his being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might 
be lost: and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled- 
out his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of 
laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed crank 
and slack), or else his twanging nasal, Bravo / Das glaub' 
ich ; in either case, by way of heartiest approval. In short, if 
Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, except perhaps 
in his self-seclusion, and god-like indifference, there was 
no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief 
Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could knead and publish 
was other than medicinal and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did Teufels- 
drockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and most likely 
does he still, live and meditate. Here, perched-up in his 
high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in solitude, out- 
watching the Bear, it was that the indomitable Inquirer 
fought all his battles with Dulness and Darkness ; here, in 
all probability, that he wrote this surprising Volume on 
Clothes. Additional particulars : of his age, which was of 
that standing middle sort you could only, guess at ; of his 
wide surtout : the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad- 
brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might report, but do 
not. The Wisest truly is, in these times, the Greatest ; so 
that an enlightened curiosity, leaving Kings and suchhke to 



CHARACTERISTICS. 23 

rest very much on their own basis, turns more and more 
to the Philosophic Class : nevertheless, what reader expects 
that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could 
be brought home to him, till once the Documents arrive? 
His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are as yet hidden 
from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. But, on the 
other hand, does not Iiis Soul lie enclosed in this remark- 
able Volume, much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in 
the buried Bag of Doubloons ? To the soul of Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on the *' Origin and 
and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly return. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

IT were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this Work 
on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, like all 
works of genius, like the very Sun, which, though the high- 
est published creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless 
black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its effulgence, — 
a mixture of insight, inspiration, with dulness, double-vision, 
and even utter blindness. 

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic praises 
and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo' sche Anzelger, we 
admitted that the Book had in a high degree excited us to 
self-activity, which is the best effect of any book; that it had 
even operated changes in our way of thought ; nay, that it 
promised to prove, as it were, the opening of a new mine- 
shaft, wherein the whole world of Speculation might hence- 
forth dig to unknown depths. More especially it may now 
be declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

patience of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, are 
here made indisputably manifest; and unhappily no less his 
prolixity and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude ; that, on 
the whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreason- 
able, there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise 
specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popu- 
larity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from the 
choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of 
treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity and academic 
seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in a German, but 
fatal to his success with our public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen little, 
or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks-out with a 
strange plainness ; calls many things by their mere dictionary 
names. To him the Upholsterer is no Pontiff, neither is 
any Drawing-room a Temple, were it never so begilt and 
overhung: " a whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier- 
glasses, and or-molu," as he himself expresses it, '^ cannot 
hide from me that such Drawing-room is simply a section 
of Infinite Space, where so many God-created Souls do for 
the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the highest 
Duchess is respectable, is venerable ; but nowise for her 
pearl bracelets and Malines laces: in his eyes, the star of a 
Lord is little less and little more than the broad button of 
Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock; " each is an imple- 
ment," he says, *' in its kind ; a tag for hookiiig-together ; 
and, for the rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on 
a stithy before smith's fingers." Thus does the Professor 
look in men's faces with a strange impartiality, a strange 
scientific freedom ; like a man unversed in the higher 
circles, like a man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly 
considered, it is in this peculiarity, running through his 
whole system of thought, that all these short-comings, over> 



CHARACTERISTICS, 25 

shootings, and multiform perversities, take rise : if indeed 
they have not a second source, also natural enough, in his 
Transcendental Philosophies, and humor of looking at all 
Matter and Material things as Spirit ; whereby truly his case 
were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class it 
is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we can 
safely recommend the Work : nay, who knows but among 
the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufelsdrockh 
maintains, that ^' within the most starched cravat there passes 
a windpipe and weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered 
waistcoat beats a heart," — the force of that rapt earnestness 
may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the soul pierce 
through ? In our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist 
living on locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored 
energy, a silent, as it were unconscious, strength, which, 
except in the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. 
Many a deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, 
has he cast into mysterious Nature, and the still more 
mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting 
words, now and then, he severs asunder the confusion ; 
shears down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of 
the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the head, but 
with crushing force smites it home, and buries it. — On the 
other hand, let us be free to admit, he is the most unequal 
writer breathing. Often after some such feat, he will play 
truant for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and 
mumbling and maundering the merest commonplaces, as if 
he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and litera- 
ture in most known tongues, from SancJioniathon to Dr. 
Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and Talmiids, and 
K oralis^ with Cassini's Siamese Tables^ and Laplace's 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

Mecaniqiie Celeste^ down to Robinson Cricsoe and the Bdfast 
Town and Coiuitry Almanack^ are familiar to him, — ^we 
shall say nothing: for unexampled as it is with us, to the 
Germans such universality of study passes without wonder, 
as a thing commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, 
and there of course. A man that devotes his life to learning, 
shall he not be learned? 

In respect of style our Author manifests the same genial 
capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, inequality, 
and apparent want of intercourse with the higher classes. 
Occasionally, as above hinted, we find consummate vigor, a 
true inspiration ; his burning thoughts step forth in fit burn- 
ing words, like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid 
flame and splendor from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic dic- 
tion, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint 
tricksy turns ; all tlie graces and terrors of a wild Imagina- 
tion, wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful 
vicissitude. Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific 
passages ; circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure 
doting jargon, so often intervene ! On the whole, Professor 
Tcufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences 
perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on their 
legs ; the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, but- 
tressed-up by props (of parentheses and dashes), and ever 
with this or the other tagrag hanging from them ; a few even 
sprawl-out helplessly on all sides, quite broken-backed and 
dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, 
there lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone pervades 
the whole utterance of the man, like its keynote and regu- 
lator ; now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or 
else the shrill mockery of Fiends ; now sinking in cadences, 
not without melodious heartiness, though sometimes abrupt 
enough, into the common pitch, when we hear it only as a 



ClIA RA C TERIS TICS, 2 J 

monotonous hum ; of which hum the true character is 
extremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never 
fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum of real 
Humor, which we reckon among the very highest quahties of 
genius, or some echo of mere Insanity and Inanity, which 
doubtless ranks below the very lowest. 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal inter- 
course, do we still He with regard to the Professor's moral 
feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from him, 
soft wailings of infinite pity ; he could clasp the whole Uni- 
verse into his bosom, and keep it warm; it seems as if under 
that rude exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then again 
he is so sly and still, so imperturbably saturnine ; shows 
such indifference, malign coolness towards all that men 
strive after ; and ever wdth some half-visible wrinkle of a 
bitter sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid callous- 
ness, — that you look on him almost with a shudder, as on 
some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terres- 
trial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge 
foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and 
demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically 
whirled, in which only children could take interest. His 
look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen : 
yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among 
our own Chancery suitors ; but rather the gravity as of some 
silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the crater of 
an extinct volcano ; into whose black deeps you fear to 
gaze : those eyes, those lights that sparkle in it, may indeed 
be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances 
from the region of Nether Fire ! 

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether enig- 
matic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh ! Here, however, we 
gladly recall to mind that once we saw him laugh; once 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

only, perhaps it was the first and last time in his life ; but 
then such a peal of laughter, enough to have awakened the 
Seven Sleepers! It was of Jean Paul's doing: some single 
billow in that vast World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its 
heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, alas, all con- 
gealed in the frost of death ! The large-bodied Poet and 
the small, both large enough in soul, sat talking miscel- 
laneously together, the present Editor being privileged to 
listen ; and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of 
those inimitable " Extra-harangues ; " and, as it chanced, 
On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King: gradually a light 
kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, man- 
tling, loveliest light ; through those murky features, a radiant, 
ever-young Apollo looked ; and he burst forth like the neigh- 
ing of all Tattersall's, — tears streaming down his cheeks, 
pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — loud, long- 
continuing, uncontrollable ; a laugh not of the face and 
diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head to heel. 
The present Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, 
began to fear all was not right : however, Teufelsdrockh 
composed himself, and sank into his old stillness ; on his 
inscrutable countenance there was, if any thing, a slight 
look of shame ; and Richter himself could not rouse him 
again. Readers who have any tincture of Psychology know 
how much is to be inferred from this ; and that no man who 
has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether 
'Treclaimably bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher- 
key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! Some men 
wear an everlasting barren simper; in the smile of others 
lies a cold glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter and 
snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, produce 
some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were laughing 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES, 29 

through wool : of none such comes oood. The man who can- 
not laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.; 
but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem. 

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one 
scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst : an almost 
total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, it 
is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time produces, 
through the Narrative portions, a certain show of outward 
method ; but of true logical method and sequence there is 
too little. Apart from its multifarious sections and sub- 
divisions, the Work naturally falls into two Parts; a His 
torical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical-Speculative ; but 
falls, unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation ; in that 
labyrinthic combination, each Part overlaps, and indents, 
and indeed runs quite through the other. Many sections 
are of a debatable rubric, or even quite nondescript and 
unnamable ; whereby the Book not only loses in accessi 
bility, but too often distresses us like some mad banquet, 
wherein all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, 
soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine -wine and French 
mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the 
hungry Public invited to help itself. To bring what order 
we can out of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavor. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 

"AS Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws,'" observes our 

-^^ Professor, "so could I write a Spirit of Clothes ; thus, 

with an Esprit des Lois, properly an Esprit de Coittumes, 

we should have an Esprit de Costumes, For neither in 



30 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed by mere 
Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by mysterious 
operations of the mind. In all his Modes, and habilatory 
endeavors, an Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his 
Body and the Cloth are the site and materials whereon and 
whereby his beautified edifice, of a Person, is to be built. 
Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, based on 
light sandals ; tower-up in high headgear, from amid peaks, 
spangles and bell-girdles ; swell-out in starched ruffs, buck- 
ram stuffings, and monstrous tuberosities ; or girth himself 
into separate sections, and front the world an Agglomeration 
of four limbs, — will depend on the nature of such Archi- 
tectural Idea: whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or 
altogether Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, 
what meaning lies in Color ! From the soberest drab to 
the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold them- 
selves in choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect and 
Talent, so does the Color betoken Temper and Heart. In 
all which, among nations as among individuals, there is an 
mcessant, indubitable, though infinitely complex working of 
Cause and Effect: every snip of the Scissors has been 
regulated and prescribed by ever-active Influences, which 
doubtless to Intelligences of a superior order are neither 
invisible nor illegible. 

''For such superior Intelligences a Cause - and - Effect 
Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a com- 
fortable winter-evening entertainment : nevertheless, for in- 
ferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies have always 
seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, what is your 
Montesquieu himself but a clever infant spelling Letters 
from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which 
lies in Eternity, in Heaven? — Let any Cause-and-Effect 
Philosopher explain, not why I wear such and such a Gar- 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES, 3 1 

ment, obey such and such a Law ; but even why / am here^ 
to wear and obey any thing! — Much, therefore, if not the 
whole, of that same Spij^it of Clothes I shall suppress, as 
hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent : naked Facts, 
and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another than that 
omniscient style, are my humbler and proper province." 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh has 
nevertheless contrived to take-in a well-nigh boundless extent 
of field ; at least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond 
our horizon. Selection being indispensable, we shall here 
glance-over his First Part only in the most cursory manner. 
This First Part is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous 
learning, and utmost patience and fairness : at the same 
time, in its results and delineations, it is much more likely 
to interest the Compilers of some Library of General, 
Entertaining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge than the 
miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this Part of 
the Book which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recom- 
mended us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, *' at 
present the glory of British Literature " ? If so, the Library 
Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. 

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and Fig- 
leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions of a 
mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite 
antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with giving an 
unconcerned approval. Still less have we to do with " Lilis, 
Adam's first wife, whom, according to the Talmudists, he 
had before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, the 
whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and terrestrial Devils,-' — 
very needlessly, we think. On this portion of the Work, with 
its profound glances into the Adain-Kadmon^ or Primeval 
Element, here strangely brought into relation with the Nifl 
and Miispel ^'Darkness and Light) of the antique North, 



32 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

it may be enough to say, that its correctness of deduction, 
and depth of Tahiiudic and Rabbinical lore have filled 
perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something 
like astonishment. 

But, quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh hastens 
from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion of Man- 
kind over the whole habitable and habilable orlobe. Walkine 
by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scandinavian, Egyptian, 
Otaheitean, Ancient and Modern researches of every con- 
ceivable kind, he strives to give us in compressed shape (as 
the Niirnbergers give an Orbis P ictus) ?^xi Orbis Vestitus ; or 
view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all 
times. It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, 
we can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learning: an 
irregular Treasury, if you will; but inexhaustible as the 
Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve wagons in twelve 
days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could not carry off. 
Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts ; phylacteries, stoles, 
albs ; chlamydes, togas, Chinese silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk- 
hose, leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as 
the name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient). 
Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are 
brought vividly before us, — even the Kilmarnock nightcap 
is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must admit that 
the Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled-down quite 
pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learning, the 
drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes touch- 
ing pictures of human life. Of this sort the following has 
surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, as our Pro- 
fessor imagines, was not warmth or decency, but ornament. 
"Miserable indeed," says he, "was the condition of the 
Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely from under his fleece of 




c 



/# ' 




HAS DESCKXDEi) LIKE THYSELF FROM THAT SAME HAIR- 
MAN'ILED FLLN'i -HURLING AUORIGINAL," — Page 33. 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 33 

hair, which witli the beard reached down to his loins, and 
hung round him like a matted cloak ; the rest of his body 
sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the sunny 
glades of the forest, living on wild-fruits ; or, as the ancient 
Caledonian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his 
bestial or human prey; without implements, without arms, 
save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his sole posses- 
sion and defence might not be lost, he had attached a long 
cord of plaited thongs ; thereby recovering as well as hurling 
it with deadly, unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of 
Hunger and Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not 
Comfort but Decoration {Ptitz). Warmth he found in the 
toils of the chase ; or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, 
in his bark shed, or natural grotto : but for Decoration he 
must have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, w^e find tattoo- 
ing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first spiritual 
want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as indeed we still 
see among the barbarous classes in civilized countries. 

" Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer; loftiest 
Serene Highness ; nay thy owm amber-locked, snow-and- 
rose-bloom Maiden, w^orthy to glide sylphlike almost on air, 
whom thou lovest, worshippest as a divine Presence, which, 
indeed, symbolically taken, she is, — has descended, like 
thyself, from that same hair-mantled, fluit-hurling Aboriginal 
Anthropophagus ! Out of the eater cometh forth meat ; out 
of the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes are 
wrought, not by Time, yet in Time ! For not Mankind 
only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual 
growth, regenesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast forth 
thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever-working Uni- 
verse : it is a seed-grain that cannot die ; unnoticed to-day 
(says one), it will be found flourishing as a Banyan-grove 
(perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest !) after a thousand years. 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" He who first shortened the labor of Copyists by device 
of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, and cash- 
iering most Kings and Senates, and creating a whole new 
Democratic world : he had invented the Art of Printing. 
The first ground handful of Nitre, Sulphur, and Charcoal 
drove Monk Schwartz's pestle through the ceiling: what 
will the last do ? Achieve the final undisputed prostration 
of Force under Thought, of Animal courage under Spiritual. 
A simple invention it was in the old-world Grazier, — sick 
of lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it 
bartered for corn or oil, — to take a piece of Leather, and 
thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an Ox (or 
Pectis)\ put it in his pocket, and call it Pecunia^ Money. 
Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now 
Gol'den and Paper, and all miracles have been out-miracled : 
for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts ; and 
whoso has sixpence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) 
over all men ; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers 
to teach him, kings to mount guard over him, — to thfe 
length of sixpence. — Clothes too, which began in foolishest 
love of Ornament, what have they not become ! Increased 
Security and pleasurable Heat soon followed : but what of 
these ? Shame, divine Shame {Sckaam, Modesty), as yet 
a stranger to the Anthropophagous bosom, arose there mys- 
teriously under Clothes; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for 
the Holy in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, 
social polity ; Clothes have made Men of us ; they are 
threatening to make Clothes-screens of us. 

" But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Professor, 
*' Man is a Tool-using Animal {Handthierendes Thier), 
Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a basis, 
at most for the flattest-soled, of some half-square foot, in- 
securely enough ; has to straddle out his legs, lest the very 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 35 

wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals 
are a crushing lead for him ; the steer of the meadow tosses 
him aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use Tools, 
can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts 
into light dust before him ; he kneads glowing iron, as if it 
were soft paste ; seas are his smooth highway, winds and 
fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him with 
out Tools ; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is 
all." 

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream of 
Oratory with a remark, that this Definition of the Tool-using 
Animal appears to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably 
the precisest and best.^ Man is called a Laughing Animal: 
but do not the apes also laugh, or attempt to do it ; and 
is the manliest man the greatest and oftenest laugher? 
Teufelsdrockh himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still 
less do we make of that other French Definition of the 
Cooking Animal; which, mdeed, for rigorous scientific pur- 
poses, is as good as useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, 
when he only readies his steak by riding on it ? Again, 
what Cookery does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing-up 
his whale-blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do 1 
Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco 
Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow-nests, 
on the branches of trees ; and, for half the year, have no 
victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being under water .^ 
But, on the other hand, show us the human being, of any 
period or climate, without his Tools : those very Caledonians, 
as we saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no 
brute has or can have. 

" Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes Teufelsdrockh 
in his abrupt way; "of which truth Clothes are but one 
example : and surely if we consider the interval between the 



36 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those Liverpool 
Steam-carriages, or the British House of Commons, we shall 
note what progress he has made. He digs up certain black 
stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, 
Transport me and this higgctge at the rate of five~and-thirty 
77tiles an hour ; and they do it : he collects, apparently by 
lot, six-hundred and fifty-eight miscellaneous mdividuals, 
and says to them, Make this nation toil for us^ bleed for its^ 
himger and sorrow aJid sin for us j and they do it." 



CHAPTER VI. 

APRONS. 

ONE of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole 
Volume is that on Aprons. What though stout old 
Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, "whose Apron, now indeed 
hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which proved 
successful, is still the royal standard of that country;" what 
though John Knox's Daughter, " who threatened Sovereign 
Majesty that she would catch her husband's head in her 
Apron, rather than he should lie and be a bishop ; " what 
though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with many other Apron 
worthies, — figure here ? An idle wire-drawing spirit, some- 
times even a tone of levit)^, approaching to conventional 
satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for example, are 
we to make of such sentences as the following? 

"Aprons are Defences; against injury to cleanliness, to 
safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the thin 
slip of notched silk (as it were, the emblem and beatified 
ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred housewife, 
'fitting at Niirnberg Workboxes and Toyboxes, has grace^ 




"APRONS." — Page 36. 



APRONS. 37 

rally fastened on; to the thick-tanned hide, girt round him 
with thongs, wherein the Builder builds, and at evening 
sticks his trowel ; or to those jingling sheet-iron Aprons, 
wherein your otherwise half-naked Vulcans hammer and 
smelt in their smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in 
the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How much has 
been concealed, how much has been defended in Aprons ! 
Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole Military and 
Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated millions, but 
a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened apron, wherein Society 
works (uneasily enough) ; guarding itself from some soil and 
stithy-sparks, in this r3evirs-smithy {jTeiifels-schjniede) of a 
world ? But of all Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto 
has been the Episcopal or Cassock. Wherein consists the 
usefulness of this Apron ? The Overseer {Episcopits) of 
Souls, I notice, has tucked-in the corner of it, as if his day's 
w^ork were done : what docs he shadow forth thereby?" etc., 
etc. 

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to read 
such stuff as w^e shall now quote ? 

*' I consider those printed Paper Aprons, w^orn by the 
Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for 
Typography; therefore as an encouragement to modern 
Literature, and deserving of approval : nor is it without satis- 
faction that I hear of a celebrated London P^irm having in 
view to introduce the same fashion, with important exten- 
sions, in England." — We who are on the spot hear of no 
such thing; and indeed have reason to be thankful that 
hitherto there are other vents for our Literature, exuberant 
as it is. — Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such supply of 
printed Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the high- 
ways and public thoroughfares, new means must of necessity 
be had recourse to. In a world existing by Industry, we 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

grudge to employ fire as a destroying element, and not as a 
creating one. However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will 
find us an outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to 
see five-million quintals of Rags picked annually from the 
Laystall; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, 
printed-on, and sold, — returned thither; filling so many 
hungry mouths by the way.^ Thus is the Laystall, especially 
with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, the grand Electric Battery, 
and Fountain-of-motion, from which and to which the Social 
Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electricities) circulate, 
in larger or smaller circles, through the mighty, billowy, 
storm-tost Chaos of Life, which they keep alive ! " — Such 
passages fill us, who love the man, and partly esteem him, 
with a very mixed feeling. 

Farther down we meet with this : " The Journalists are 
now the true Kings and Clergy: henceforth Historians, 
unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, 
and Tudors and Hapsburgs ; but of stamped Broad-sheet 
Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, according as 
this or the other Able Editor, or Combination of Able Edit- 
ors, gains the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper Press, 
perhaps the most important of all, and wonderful enough in 
its secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descriptive 
History already exists, in that language, under the title of 
Satan's Invisible World Displayed; which, however, by 
search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet 
succeeded in procuring {veruibchte 7iicht aicfziitreiben)?'' 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. Thus 
does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where he had 
little business, confound the old authentic Presbyterian 
Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary Historian of 
the Brittische Joiirnalistik ; and so stumble on perhaps the 
most egregious blunder in Modern Literature ! 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 39 



CHAPTER VII. 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 

HAPPIER is our Professor, and more purely scientific 
and historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in 
Europe, and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century ; 
the true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that 
the Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest 
harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers 
or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring mon- 
ster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic strokes, 
and touched not seldom with that breath of genius which 
makes even old raiment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, 
graphical, and everyway interesting have we found these 
Chapters, that it may be thrown-out as a pertinent question 
for parties concerned, Whether or not a good English Trans- 
lation thereof might henceforth be profitably incorporated 
with Mr. Merrick's valuable Work On Ancient Ar7Jtor? 
Take, by way of example, the following sketch ; as authority 
for which Paulinus's Zeitkiirzende Lust (ii. G'jZ) is, with 
seeming confidence, referred to: — 

*' Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the 
Fifteenth Century, we might smile ; as perhaps those by- 
gone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our haber- 
dashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin., 
But happily no bygone German, or man, rises again ; thus 
tlie Present is not needlessly trammelled with the Past ; and 
only grows out of it, like a Tree, whose roots are not inter- 
tangled with its branches, but lie peaceably underground. 
Nay it is very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know, 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

how the Greatest and Dearest, in a short while, would find 
his place quite filled-up here, and no room for him ; the 
very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, has 
become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his Europe. 
Thus is the Law of Progress secured; and in Clothes, as 
in all other external things whatsoever, no fashion will 
continue. 

"Of the military classes in those old times, whose buff- 
belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn-boots, and 
other riding and fighting gear have been bepainted in mod- 
ern Romance, till the whole has acquired somewhat of a 
sign-post character, — I shall here say nothing : the civil 
and pacific classes, less touched upon, are wonderful enough 
for us. 

" Rich men, I find, have Teusmke " (a perhaps untranslat- 
able article); "also a silver girdle, whereat hang little bells ; 
so that when a man walks, it is with continual jingling. 
Some few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of bells 
{Glockenspiel) fastened there; which, especially in sudden 
whirls, and the other accidents of walking, has a grateful 
effect. Observe too how fond they are of peaks, and 
Gothic-arch intersections. The male world wears peaked 
caps, an ell long, which hang bobbing over the side {schief)\ 
their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of an ell, 
and laced on the side with tags; even the wooden skoes 
have their ell-long noses : some also clap bells on the peak. 
Further, according to my authority, the m?n have breeches 
without seat {phne Gesdss): these they fasten peakwise to 
their shirts ; and the long round doublet must overlap them. 

" Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scalloped out 
behind and before, so that back and breast are almost bare. 
Wives of quality, on the other hand, have train-gowns four 
or five ells in length ; which trains there are boys to carry. 









1:^ A 



•->%^ 











i 




"IN WINTER WEATHER VOU BEHOLD THE WHOLE FAIR CREATION 
IN LONG MANTLES." — J'age ^l. 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 4 1 

Brave Cleopalras, sailing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a 
Cupid for steersman ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth 
thick, which waver round them by way of hem ; the long 
flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to 
shoe, wherewith these same w^lt-gowns are buttoned. The 
maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, with 
gold spangles and pendent flames (E^Ia/nmen), that is, spar- 
kling hair-drops : but of their mother's headgear who shall 
speak? Neither in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In 
winter weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can 
afford it) in long m.antles, with skirts wide below, and, for 
hem, not one but two sufficient hand-broad welts ; all ending 
atop in a thick well-starched Ruff, some twenty inclies 
broad: these are their Ruff-mantles {Kraj^eiundntel). 

"As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are not; 
but the men have doublets of fustian, under which lie 
multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter (;-?^// Tczg 
zusa?nmengekleistcrl)^ which create protuberance enough. 
Thus do the two sexes vie with each other in the art of 
Decoration ; and as usual the stronger carries it." 

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or not, 
manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly obser- 
vance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be confidently 
predicted of so still a man, we might call a real love. None 
of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, cornuted shoes, or 
other the like phenomena, of which the History of Uress 
offers so many, escape him : more especially the mischances, 
or striking adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are 
noticed with due fidelity. wSir Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, 
which he spread in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, 
appears to provoke little enthusiasm in him ; he merely 
asks, Whether at that period the Maiden Queen " was red- 
painted on the nose, and white-painted on the cheeks, as her 



^2 5ART0R RESARTU!S. 

tirewomen, when from spleen and wrinkles she would no 
longer look in any glass, were wont to serve her? " We can 
answer that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and 
had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in 
verdigris, would have done the same. 

Thus too, treating of those enormdus habiliments, that 
were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swollen- 
out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction of 
Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment on that luckless 
Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair with some 
projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to pay his deiwir 
on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted several 
pecks of dry w^heat-dust : and stood there diminished to a 
spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling sorrowful and 
flabby round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this 
reflection : 

" By v^^hat strange chances do we live in History ? Eros- 
tratus by a torch; Milo by a bullock; Henry Darnley, an 
unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs ; most Kings and 
Queens by being born under such and such a bed-tester; 
Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) by the peck of 
a turkey; and this ill-starred individual by a rent in his 
breeches, — for no Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits 
him. Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of 
Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheerfully to Destiny, and 
read since it is written." — Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in 
mind that, nearly related to the impossible, talent of Forget- 
ting, stands that talent of Silence, which even travelling 
Englishmen manifest? 

"The simplest costume," observes our Professor, "which 
I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as regi- 
mental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. 
A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is provided (some 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 43 

were wont to cut-off the corners, and make it circular) : in 
the centre a sHt is effected eighteen inches long; through 
this the mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and 
neck ; and so rides shielded from all weather, and in battle 
from many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and 
not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied." 

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by its 
singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the superfluous, 
we shall quit this part of our subject. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 

IF in the Descriptive-Historical portion of this Volume, 
Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin 
and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished 
many a reader, much more will he in the Speculative-Philo- 
sophical portion, which treats of their Wirken^ or Influences. 
It is here that the present Editor first feels the pressure of 
his task ; for here properly the higher and new Philosophy 
of Clothes commences : an untried, almost inconceivable 
region, or chaos ; in venturing upon which, how difficult, yet 
how unspeakably important is it to know what course, of 
survey and conquest, is the true one ; where the footing is 
firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere 
cloud, and may engulf us ! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no 
less than to expound the moral, political, even religious 
Influences of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in 
its thousandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's 
earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned together, and 
held up, l)y Clotlies." He says in so many words, "Society 



44 SARTOR RESARTUS. ' 

is founded upon Clolh ; " and again, "Society sails through 
the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or rather 
like the wSheet of clean and unclean beasts in the Apostle's 
Dream ; and without such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to 
endless depths, or mount to inane limbos, and in either 
case be no more." 

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected tissues, 
of Meditation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, and 
innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn therefrom, it 
were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt exhibiting. Our 
Professor's method is not, in any case, that of common school 
Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, each holding by 
the skirts of the other ; but at best tliat of practical Reason, 
proceeding by large Intuition over whole systematic groups 
and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, 
almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or 
spiritual Picture of Nature : a mighty maze, yet, as faith 
whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, 
that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere 
confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to 
exclaim : Would to Heaven those same Biographical Docu- 
ments were come ! For it seems as if the demonstration 
lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not 
Argument that had taught him, but Experience. At present 
it is only in local glimpses, and by significant fragments, 
picked often at wide-enough intervals from the original Vol- 
ume, and carefully collated, that we can hope to impart some 
outline or foreshadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any 
intelligence are once more invited to favor us with their 
most concentrated attention: let these, after intense consid- 
eration, and not till then, pronounce, Whether on the utmost 
verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming as of 
Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole 



^ 




■^^ 




" 'SOCIETY IS FOUNDED UPON CLOTH ,* AND AGAIN, 'SOCIETY SAILS 
THROUGH THE INFINITUDE ON CLOTH.' " — Pa^e 44. 



THE IVOK/.D OUT OF CLOTHES. 45 

undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvas to sail 
thither? — As exordium to the whole, stand here the follow- 
iiig long citation : 

X"With men of a speculative turn," writes Teufelsdrockh. 
t" there come seasons, m.editative, sweet, yet awful hours, 
when in wonder and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable 
question : Who am // the thing that can say ^ I ' {das Wesen 
das sicJi ICH ne7int)} The world, with its loud trafficking, 
retires into the distance; and, through the paper-hangings, 
and stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Commerce and 
Polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments (of Society 
and a Body), wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, — 
the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are 
alone with the Universe, and silently commune, with it, as 
one mysterious Presence with another. 

''Who am I; what is this Me? A Voice, a Motion, 
an Appearance; — some embodied, visualized Idea in the 
Eternal Mind ? Cogito^ ergo suin. Alas, poor Cogitator, this 
takes us but a little way. Sure enough, I am ; and lately 
was not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The answer 
lies around, written in all colors and motions, uttered in all 
tones of jubilee and wail, in thousand-figured, thousand- 
voiced, harmonious Nature : but where is the cunning eye 
and ear to w^hom that God-written Apocalypse will yield 
articulate meaning? We sit as in a boundless Phantasma- 
goria and Dream-grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, 
the remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: 
sounds and many -colored visions flit round our sense; 
but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream and 
Dreamer are, we see not ; except in rare half-waking mo- 
ments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before us, like 
a glorious Rainbow; but the Sun that made it lies behind 
us, hidden from us._ Then in that strange Dream, how we 



46 . SARTOR RESARTUS. 

clutch at shadows as if they were substances ; and slo^^p 
deepest while fancying ourselves most awake ! Which of 
your Philosophical Systems is other than a dream-theorem; 
a net quotient, confidently given out, where divisor and divi- 
dend are both unknown ? What are all your national Wars, 
with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled Rev- 
olutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This 
Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth call 
Life ; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly wander, as if 
they knew right hand from left; yet they only are wise who 
know that they know nothing. 

'■'• Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so inex- 
pressibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being is still 
like the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede; and 
for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, 
a spiritual. What are your Axioms, and Categories, and 
Systems, and Aphorisms ? Words, words. High Air-castles 
are cunningly built of Words, the Words well bedded also 
in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no Knowledge 
will come to lodge. The whole is g7'eater than the part : 
how exceedingly true ! Nat^ire abhors a vacuui7t : how 
exceedingly false and calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act 
but where it is : with all my heart ; only, where is it? Be 
not the slave of Words : is not the Distant, the Dead, while 
I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, Here, in the 
genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on ? But that 
same Where, with its brother When, are from the first the 
master-colors of our Dream-grotto ; say rather, the Canvas 
(the warp and woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and 
Life-visions are painted. Nevertheless, has not a deeper 
meditation taught certain of every climate and age, that the 
Where and When, so mysteriously inseparable from all 
our thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhesions to 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 47 

thought ; tliat the Seer may discern them where they mount 
up out of the celestial Everywhere and Forever: have 
not all nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and 
Eternal; as existing in a universal Here, an everlasting 
Now ? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is but a 
mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time ; there is no 
Space and no Time : We are — we know not what; — light- 
sparkles floating in the ether of Deity ! 

" So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were but 
an air-image, our Me the only reality : and Nature, with its 
thousandfold production and destruction, but the reflex of 
our own inward Force, the ' phantasy of our Dream ; ' or 
what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names it, the living visible 
Garnicjit of God : 

"'In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
I walk and work, above, beneath, 
Work and weave in endless motion ! 

Birth and Death, 

An infinite ocean ; 

A seizing and giving 

The fire of Living : 
'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply. 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by.' 

Of twenty millions that have lead and spouted this thunder- 
speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet» twenty units of us that 
have learned the meaning thereof? ) 

*' It was in some such mood, when wearied and fordone 
with these high speculations, that I first came upon the 
question of Clothes. Strange enough, it strikes me, is this 
same fact of there being Tailors and Tailored. The Horse 
I ride has his own whole fell : strip him of the girths and 
flaps and extraneous tags I have fastened round him, and the 



48 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

noble creature is his own sempster and weaver and spinner; 
nay his own bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner ; he 
bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rainproof 
court-suit on his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit 
have reached perfection ; nay, the graces also have been 
considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of color, 
featly appended, and ever in the right place, are not wanting. 
While I — good Heaven! — have thatched myself over with 
the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the entrails 
of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt of furred 
beasts ; and walk abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped 
with shreds and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of 
Nature, where they would have rotted, to rot on me more 
slowly ! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew ; day 
after day, this despicable thatch must lose some film of its 
thickness ; some film of it, frayed away by tear and wear, 
must be brushed-off into the Ashpit, into the Laystall ; til] 
by degrees the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the 
dust-making, patent Rag-grinder, get new material to grind 
down. O subter-brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have not I 
too a compact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier ? Am I a 
botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; or 
a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figure, automatic, 
nay alive ? 

" Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind shut 
their eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere inertia of 
Oblivion and Stupidit}^, live at ease in the midst of Wonders 
and Terrors. But indeed man is, and was always, a block- 
head and dullard ; much readier to feel and digest, than to 
think and consider. Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, 
is his absolute lawgiver ; mere use-and-wont everywhere 
leads him by the nose ; thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let 
but a Creation of the World happen twice^ and it ceases to 



ADAMITISM. 49 

be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not 
once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, of any 
country or generation, be he gold-mantled Prince or russet- 
jerkined Peasant, that his Vestments and his Self are not 
one and indivisible ; that he is naked, without vestments, till 
he buy or steal such, and by forethought sew and button 
them. 

*' For my own part, these considerations, of our Clothes- 
thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of 
hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me with a certain 
horror at myself and mankind ; almost as one feels at those 
Dutch Cows, which, during the wet season, you see grazing 
deliberately with jackets and petticoats (of striped sacking), 
in the meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is something 
great in the moment when a man first strips himself of ad- 
ventitious wrappages ; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, 
as Swift has it, ' a forked straddling animal with bandy legs ; ' 
yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries." 



CHAPTER IXr 

ADAMITISMo 

LET no courteous reader take offence at the opinions 
broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The 
Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular passage, 
was inclined to exclaim : What, have we got not only a 
Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the abstract ? A 
new Adamite, in this century, which flatters itself that it is 
the Nineteenth, and destructive both to Saperstition and 
Enthusiasm ? 

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits un- 



so SARTOR RESARTUS. 

speakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. For 
example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery fresh- 
man and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling and puking 
in thy nurse's arms ; sucking thy coral, and looking forth 
into the world in the blankest manner, what hadst thou been 
without thy blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls ? 
A terror to thyself and mankind ! Or hast thou forgotten 
the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy long 
clothes became short? The village w^here thou livedst was 
all apprised of the fact; and neighbor after neighbor kissed 
thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper 
coins, on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, 
wert not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or 
Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever name, 
according to year and place, such phenomenon is distin- 
guished? In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. 
Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, and thy 
clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast thou 
always worn them perforce, and as a consequence of Man's 
Fall ; never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable House, 
a Body round thy Body, wherein that strange Thee of thine 
sat snug, defying all variations of Climate? Girt with thick 
double-milled kerseys ; half-buried under shawls and broad- 
brims, and overalls and mud-boots, thy very fingers cased in 
doeskin and mittens, thou has bestrode that '^ Horse I ride ; " 
and, though it were in wild winter, dashed through the world 
glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet 
beat round thy temples ; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, 
felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds howl, 
— forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto deep, — 
and the storms heap themselves together into one huge 
Arctic whirlpool : thou flewest through the middle thereof 
striking fire from the highway ; wild music hummed in thy 





^••Wi 





-fe ^ r.jak'Bn 



"a terror to thyself and mankind." — Pa£^e 50. 



ADAMITISM. 5 1 

ears, thou too wert as a ^' sailor of the air ; " the wreck of 
matter and the crash of worlds was thy element and pro- 
pitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without bit or 
saddle, what hadst thou been ; what had thy fleet quadruped 
been? — Nature is good, but she is not the best : here truly 
was the victory of Art over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed 
might have pierced thee ; all short of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh for- 
gotten what he said lately about " Aboriginal Savages," and 
their *' condition miserable indeed " ? Would he have all 
this unsaid ; and us betake ourselves again to the '* matted 
cloak," and go sheeted in a " thick natural fell " ? 

Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows full well 
what he is saying ; and both thou and we, in our haste, do 
him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, " so tailorize and 
demoralize us," have they no redeeming value ; can they not 
be altered to serve better ; must they of necessity be thrown 
to the dogs ? The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sans- 
culottist, is no Adamite ; and much perhaps as he might 
wish to go forth before this degenerate age " as a Sign," 
would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, in a 
state of Nakedness. The utility of Clothes is altogether 
apparent to him : nay perhaps he has an insight into their 
more recondite, and almost mystic qualities, what we might 
call the omnipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never 
before vouchsafed to any man. For example : 

"You see two individuals," he writes, "one dressed in 
fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue: Red says to 
lilue, ' Be hanged and anatomized ; ' Blue hears with a 
shudder, and (O wonder of' wonders !) marches sorrowfully 
to the gallows ; is there noosed -up, vibrates his hour, and the 
surgeons dissect him, and fit his bones into a skeleton for 
medical purposes. How is this ; or what make ye of your 



52 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

Nothing ca7i act but where it is ? Red has no physical hold 
of Blue, no chttch of him, is nowise in contact with him : 
neither are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants 
and Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding Red, 
that he can tug them hither and thither ; but each stands 
distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as it is spoken, 
so is it done : the articulated Word sets all hands in Action ; 
and Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. 

^' Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold : First, 
that Man is a Spirit, ^Lnd bound by invisible bonds to All 
Men J secondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the visible 
emblems of that fact. Has not your Red hanging-individual 
a horsehair wig, squirrel-skins, and a plush-gown ; whereby 
all mortals know that he is a Judge? — Societ}^, which the 
more I think of it astonishes me the more, is founded upon 
Cloth. 

'" Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous 
ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing-rooms, 
Levees, Couchees ; and how the ushers and macers and pur- 
suivants are all in waiting ; how Duke this is presented by 
Archduke that, and Colonel A by General B, and innumer- 
able Bishops, Admirals, and miscellaneous Functionaries, 
are advancing gallantly to the Anointed Presence ; and I 
strive, in my remote privacy, to form a clear picture of that 
solemnity, — on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, 
the — shall I speak of it? — the Clothes fly-o£f the whole 
dramatic corps ; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, 
Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand 
straddling there, not a shirt on them ; and I know not 
whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical 
infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, after 
hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace of those 
afflicted with tke like," 



ADAMITISM. 53 

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to 
Aeep it secret ! Who is there now that can read the five 
columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper with 
out a shudder ? Hypochondriac men, and all men are to a 
certain extent hypochondriac, should be more gently treated. 
With what readiness our fancy, in this shattered state of the 
nerves, follows out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, 
with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw: 

" What would Majesty do, could such an accident befall 
in reality; should the buttons all simultaneously start, and 
the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as here in Dream ? 
Ach Gott I How each skulks into the nearest hiding-place; 
their high State Tragedy {Haiipt- tmd Staats-Actioii) be 
comes a Pickleherring-Farce to v/eep at, which is the worst 
kind of Farce; tJie tables (according to Horace), and with 
them, the whole fabric of Government, Legislation, Prop- 
erty, Police, and Civilized Society, are dissolved^ in wails 
and howls." 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Windle- 
straw addressing a naked House of Lords? Imagination, 
choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and will not for- 
ward with the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, the 
Opposition licnches — infaiidiun I infaiidimt I And yet 
why is the thing impossible ? Was not every soul, or rather 
every body, of these Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or 
nearly so, last night ; *' a forked Radish with a head fantas- 
tically carved.^" And why might he not, did our stern fate 
so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in 
that no-fashion ; and there, with other similar Radishes, 
hold a Bed of Justice ? " Solace of those afflicted with the 
like ! '' Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a 
*' physical or psychical infirmity" before .-^ And now how 
many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, 



54 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

even to the sounder British world, and goaded-on by Critical 
and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) incurably infect 
therewith ! Art thou the malignest of Sansculottists^ or 
only the maddest? 

" It will remain to be examined," adds the inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh, " in how far the Scarecrow, as a Clothed 
Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, and English 
trial by jury : nay perhaps, considering his high function 
(for is not he too a Defender of Property, and Sovereign 
armed with the termors of the Law ?), to a certain royal 
Immunity and Inviolability; which, however, misers and 
the meaner class of persons are not always voluntarily dis- 
posed to grant him." . . . " O my Friends, we are (in Yorick 
Sterne's words) but as ' turkeys driven, with a stick and red 
clout, to the market : ^ or if some drivers, as they do in 
Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put pease in it, the rattle 
thereof terrifies the boldest ! " 



CHAPTER X„ 

PURE REASONo 

IT must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as 
above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very 
darkest tinge ; acknowledging, for most part, in the solemni- 
ties and paraphernalia of civilized Life, wdiich we make so 
much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and 
*' bladders with dried pease." To linger among such specu- 
lations, longer than mere Science requires, a discerning 
public can have no wish. For our purposes the simple fact 
that such a Awaked World is possible, nay actually exists 
(under the Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, therefore, 




"as turkeys driven UITJI a SIICK, and red CI. out lO THE 

MARKET." — Page S^' 



PURE REASON. 55 

we omit about *• Kings wrestling naked on the green with 
Carmen,"' and the Kings being thrown: "dissect them with 
scalpels," says Teufelsdrockh ; " the same viscera, tissues, 
livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are there : examine their 
spiritual mechanism ; the same great Need, great Greed, 
and little Faculty ; nay ten to one but the Carman, who 
understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, some- 
thing of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, with 
other branches of wagon-science, and has actually put forth 
his hand and operated on Nature, is the more cunningly 
gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so unspeakable dif- 
ference ? From Clothes." Much also we shall omit about 
confusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and how it 
would be everywhere " Hail fellow well met," and Chaos 
were come again : all which to any one that has once fairly 
pictured-out the grand mother-idea, Society in a state of 
Nakedness^ will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some 
sceptical individual still entertain doubts whether in a world 
without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even 
Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, and 
view there the boundless Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, 
stretching sour and pestilential : over which we have lightly 
flown ; where not only whole armies but whole nations 
might sink! If indeed the following argument, in its brief 
riveting emphasis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final : 

" Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like the 
Kangaroo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we possess 
the master-organ, soul's seat, and true pineal gland of the 
Body Social: I mean, a Purse?" 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teufels- 
drockh ; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or to love 
him. For though, in looking at the fair tapestry of human 
Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he dwells not 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the reverse ; and 
indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold 
thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with an almost diabolic 
patience and indifference, which must have sunk him in the 
estimation of most readers, — there is that within which 
unspeakably distinguishes him from all other past and pres- 
ent Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled peculiarity of 
Teufelsdrockh is, that with all this Descendentalism, he 
combines a Transcendentalism, no less superlative ; whereby 
if on the one hand he degrade man below most animals, 
except those jacketed Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts 
him beyond the visible Heavens, almost to an equality with 
the Gods. 

" To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, '* what is man ? 
An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the eye of 
Pure Reason what is he ? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine 
Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there lies, under 
all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh (or of Senses), con- 
textured in the Loom of Heaven ; whereby he is revealed to 
his like, and dwells with them in Union and Division ; and 
sees and fashions for himself a Universe, with azure Starry 
Spaces, and long Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is 
he under that strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colors 
and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inextricably over- 
shrouded : yet it is sky-woven, and worthy of a God. Stands 
he not thereby in the centre of Liimensities, in the conflux 
of Eternities ? He feels ; power has been given him to 
know, to believe ; nay does not the spirit of Love, free in 
its celestial primeval brightness, even here, though but for 
moments, look through 1 Well said Saint Chrysostom, with 
his lips of gold, 'the true Shekinah is Man:' where else 
is the God's-Presence manifested not to our eyes only, 
but to our hearts, as in our fellow-man?" ) 



PURE reason: 57 

In such passages, unliappily too rare, the high Platonic 
Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the fundamental 
element of his nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood : 
and, through all the vapor and tarnish of what is often so 
perverse, so mean in his exterior and environment, we seem 
to look into a whole inward Sea of Light and Love ; — 
though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon roll together 
again, and hide it from view. 

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere traceable in this 
man; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have been long 
ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has more than a 
common meaning, but has two meanings : thus, if in the 
highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne-Mantle, as well 
as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, 
Decay, Contemptibility ; there is in each sort Poetry also, 
and a reverend Worth. ( For Matter, were it never so despi- 
cable, is Spirit, the manifestation of Spirit : vv^ere it never 
so honorable, can it be more ? The thing Visible, nay the 
thing Imagined, the thing in any way conceived as Visible, 
what is it but a Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial 
Invisible, "unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of 
bright " ?J Under which point of view the following passage, 
so strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems charac- 
teristic enough : 

"The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on 
Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become 
transparent. * The Philosopher,' says the wisest of this 
age, ' must station himself in the middle : ' how true ! The 
Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has descended, and 
the Lowest has mounted up; who is the equal and kindly 
brother of all. 

" Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, whether 
woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent Arachnes that 



58 S.ARTOR RESARTUS. 

weave imrestingly in our imagination? Or, on the other 
hand, what is there that we cannot love ; since all was 
created by God? x 

•' Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a Man 
(the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State- 
paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may 
be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less 
incompetent Digestive-apparatus ; yet also an inscrutable 
venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that sees with 
eyes ! '' 

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he deals 
much in the feeling of Wonder; insists on the necessity 
and high worth of universal Wonder; w^hich he holds to be 
the only reasonable temper for the denizen of so singular 
a Planet as ours. *' Wonder," says he, " is the basis of 
Worship : the reign of wonder is perennial, indestructible 
in Man ; only at certain stages (as the present), it is, for 
some short season, a reign in partibus infideliu7n?'' That 
progress of Science, which is to destroy Wonder, and in its 
stead substitute Mensuration and Numeration, finds small 
favor with Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates 
these two latter processes. 

" Shall your Science," exclaims he, '^proceed in the small 
chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground workshop of 
Logic alone ; and man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, 
whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere Tables of Sines 
and Tangents, Codification, and Treatises of what you call 
Political Economy, are the Meal ? And what is that Science, 
which the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and 
(Hke the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to 
keep it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — 
but one other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for 
which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too noble 



PUA'E REASOiV, 59 

an organ? I mean that Thouglit without Reverence is 
barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, dies like cookery with 
the day that called it forth ; does not live, like sowing, in 
successive tilths and wider-spreading harvests, bringing food 
and plenteous increase to all Time." 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or 
softer, according to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain 
persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, that 
class of " Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and pro- 
fessed Enemies to Wonder ; who, in these days, so numer- 
ously patrol as night-constables about the Mechanics' 
Institute of Science, and cackle, like true Old-Roman geese 
and goslings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on none ;. 
nay who often, as illuminated Sceptics, walk abroad into 
peaceable society, in full daylight, with rattle and lantern, 
and insist on guiding you and guarding you therewith, 
though the Sun is shining, and the street populous with 
mere justice-loving men : " that whole class is inexpressibly 
wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon animation 
he peorates : 

*• The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually 
wonder (and worship), were he President of innumerable 
Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mecanique Celeste 
and HegeVs Philosophy^ and the epitome of all Laboratories 
and Observatories with their results, in his single head, — 
is but a Pair of Spectacles behind which there is no Eye. 
Let those who have Eyes look through him, then he may 
be useful. 

*' Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk 
through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest 
Truth, or even by the hand-lamp of what I call Attorney- 
Logic ; and * explain ' all, ^account ' for all, or believe nothing 
of it.*^ Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; whoso recognizes 



6o SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which 
is everywhere under our feet and among our hands ; to 
whom the Universe is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a 
Kitchen and Cattle-stall, — he shall be a delirious Mystic; 
to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer 
thy hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks 
his foot through it? — Armer Teufel! Doth not thy cow 
calve, doth not thy bull gender ? Thou thyself, wert thou 
not born, wilt thou not die ? '• Explain ' me all this, or do 
one of two things : Retire into private places with thy fool- 
ish cackle ; or, what were better, give it up, and weep, not 
that the reign of wonder is done, and God's world all disem- 
bellished and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante 
and Sandblind Pedant." 



CHAPTER XL 

PROSPECTIVE. 

I^HE Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we 
- predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new bound- 
less expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect, 
yet not without azure loomings in the far distance, and 
streaks as of an Elysian brightness ; the highly question- 
able purport and promise of which it is becoming more and 
more important for us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian 
brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of 
Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific 
Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a Hell- 
on-Earth ? 

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious or 
inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher and 



PROSPECTIVE 6 1 

dizzier are the heights he leads us to ; more piercing, all- 
comprehending, all-confounding are his views and glances. 
For example, this of Nature being not an Aggregate but a 
Whole : 

"Well saner the Hebrew Psalmist : 'If I take tlie winces 
of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the uni- 
verse, God is there.', Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, 
who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, knowing 
God only by tradition, knowest thou any corner of the 
world where at least Force is not ? The drop which thou 
shakest from thy wet hand, rests not where it falls, but 
to-morrow thou findest it swept away ; already on the wings 
of the Northwind, it is nearing the Tropic of Cancer. How 
came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless .^ Thinkest thou 
there is aught motionless ; without Force, and utterly dead ? y 
6* As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself :' 
That little fire which glows star-like across the dark-growing 
{jinchtende) moor, where the sooty smith bends over his 
anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, — is it 
a detached, separated speck, cut-off from the whole Uni- 
verse: or indissolubly joined to the whole .^ Thou fool, that 
smithy-fire was (primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air 
that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the 
Dogstar; therein, with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and 
the far stranger Force of Man, are cunning affinities and 
battles and victories of Force brought about ; it is a little 
ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital system of 
Immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, 
kindled on the bosom of the All ; whose iron sacrifice, whose 
iron smoke and influence reach quite through the All ; 
whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and sinew, 
preaches forth the mystery of Force ; nay preaches forth 
(exoterically enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of 



62 SARTOR .RESARTUS, 

Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force, commanding, and 
one day to be all-commanding. ; 

" Detached, separated ! I say there is no such separation : 
nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; but all, were 
it only a withered leaf, works together with all ; is borne 
forward on the bottomless, shoreless flood of Action, and 
lives through perpetual metamorphoses. The withered leaf 
is not dead and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, 
though working in inverse order; else how could it rot? 
Despise not the rag from which man makes Paper, or the 
litter from which the earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed 
no meanest object is insignificant ; all objects are as win- 
dows, through which the philosophic eye looks into Infinitude 
itself." 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy-Altar, 
what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and whither 
will they sail with us ? 

" All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not 
there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: 
Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, 
and body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as we think 
them, are so unspeakably significant. Clothes, from the 
King's mantle downwards, are emblematic, not of want only, 
but of a manifold cunning Victory over Want. On the other 
hand, all Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought- 
woven or hand-woven : must not the Imagination weave 
Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the els,e invisible creations 
and inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, revealed, and 
first become all-powerful ; — the rather if, as we often see, 
the Hand too aid her, and (by wool Clothes or otherwise) 
reveal such even to the outward eye ? 

" Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 
clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, if you 



PROSPECTIVE, . 63 

consider it, what is Aian himself, and lii^ whole terrestrial 
Life, but an Emblem; a Clothing or visible Garment for 
that divine Me of liis, cast hither, like a light-particle, down 
from Heaven? Thus is he said also to be clothed with a 
Body. 

"Language is called the Garment of Thought: however, 
it should rather be. Language is the Flesh-Garment, the 
Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination wove this 
Flesh-Garment; and does not she? Metaphors are her 
stuff: examine Language; what, if you except some few 
primitive elements (of natural sound), what is it all but Meta- 
phors, recognized as such, or no longer recognized; still 
fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless ? If those 
same primitive elements are the osseous "" fixtures in the 
Flesh-Garment, Language, — then are Metaphors its mus- 
cles and tissues and living integuments. An-unmetaphorical 
style you shall in vain seek for : is not your very Attention 
a Stretchiu^^-to? The difference lies here: some styles are 
lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; some are 
even quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; while 
others again glow in the flush of health and vigorous self- 
growth, sometimes (as in my own case) not without an 
apoplectic tendency. Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, 
which overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best naked), 
and deceptively bedizening, or bolstering it out, may be 
called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks {Putz- 
Mdntel), and tawdry \voollen rags : whereof he that runs and 
reads may gather whole hampers, — and burn them." 

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader ever 
chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? However, 
that is not our chief grievance ; the Professor continues : 

" Why multiply instances ? It is written, the Heavens and 
the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which indeed they 



64 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

are^ the Time-vesture of the Eternal. 'Whatsoever sensibl}) 
exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, is properly a 
Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put on for a season, an,d to be 
laid off. Thus in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, 
rightly understood, is included all that men have thought, 
dreamed, done, and been : the whole External Universe and 
what it holds is but Clothing; and the essence of all Science 
lies in the Philosophy of Clothes." 

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close-bor- 
dering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without apprehen- 
sion, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself 
journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheerful daystar of 
hope hung before him, in the expected Aid of Hofrath 
Heuschrecke ; which daystar, however, melts now, not into 
the red of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, uncer- 
tain whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For 
the last week, these so-called Biographical Documents are in 
his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Mer- 
chant, whose name, known to the whole mercantile world, 
he must not mention; but whose honorable courtesy, now 
and often before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere 
literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, — the bulky Weiss- 
nichtwo Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign 
hieroglyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived 
here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall 
now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what 
breathless expectation glanced over; and, alas, with what 
unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often thrown 
down, and again taken up. 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, full of 
compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, dining repar- 
tees, and other ephemeral trivialities, proceeds to remind us 
of what we knew well already : that however it may be with 



PROSPECTIVE. 65 

MetaphN'sics, and other abstract Science originating in the 
Head {Verstand) alone, no Life-Philosophy (Lebensphiloso- 
phie\ such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates 
equally in the Character {Ge?nuth\ and equally speaks 
thereto, can attain its significance till the Character itself 
is known and seen ; *' till the Author's View of the World 
(lVeltatisicJit\ and how he actively and passively came by 
such view, are clear : in short till a Biography of him has been 
philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico-poetically 
read." "Nay," adds he, "were the speculative scientific 
Truth even known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask 
yourself, Whence came it, and Why, and How? — and rest 
not, till, if no better may be. Fancy have shaped-out an 
answer; and either in the authentic lineaments of Fact, or 
the forged ones of Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical 
History of the Man and his spiritual Endeavor lies before 
you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, " do I 
dilate on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography ? The 
great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly remarked 
that ' Man is properly the only object that interests man : ^ 
thus I too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole con- 
versation is little or nothing else but Biography or Auto- 
biography ; ever humano-anecdotical {inenschlich-anekdotisch). 
Biography is by nature the most universally profitable, 
universally pleasant of all things : especially Biography of 
distmguished individuals. 

" By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most Esteemed)," 
continues he, with an eloquence which, unless the words be 
l)urloined from Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we 
suspect, is well-nigh unaccountable, *' by this time you are 
fairly plunged {vertieft) in that mighty forest of Clothes- 
Philosophy ; and looking round, as all readers do, with 
astonishment enough. Such portions and passages as you 



66 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

have already mastered, and brought to paper, could not but 
awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind they issued 
from ; the perhaps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which 
manufactured such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. 
Had Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother ; did he, at one 
time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he 
ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his ; 
looks he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the Past, 
where only winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarticulate 
answer? Has he fought duels;— good Heaven! how did 
he comport himself when in Love ? By what singular stair- 
steps, in short, and subterranean passages, and sloughs 
of Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this won- 
derful prophetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where 
he now dwells? 

" To all these natural questions the voice of public History 
is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, and is, a 
Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far Country ; more or less 
footsore and travel-soiled ; has parted with road-companions ; 
fallen among thieves, been poisoned by bad cookery, blis- 
tered with bugbites ; nevertheless, at every stage (for they 
have let him pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the 
whole particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, 
the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly jotted 
down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior 
Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming ? Perhaps quite 
lost : one other leaf of that mighty Volume (of human 
Memory) left to fly abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound 
up, as waste paper ; and to rot, the sport of rainy winds ? 

" No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber^ in no wise ! I here, 
by the unexampled favor you stand in with our Sage, send 
not a Biography only, but an Autobiography : at least the 
materials for such ; wherefrom^ if I misreckon not, your 




SIX COXSIDKKABLK I'.A l'KR-(; \f-,s ,,,,,„ 

SOUTUKKX ZODIACAL SIGNS."— /^,,^>-,. (,^ ^ 



PROSrECTIl'E 67 

perspicacity will draw fullest insii^ht : and so the whole 
Philosophy and Philosopher of Clothes will stand clear to the 
wondering eyes of EngLmd, nay, thence, through America, 
through Hindostan, and the antipodal New Holland, finally 
conquer (67// //67////67/) great part of this terrestrial Planet ! " 

And now let the sympathizing reader judge of our feeling 
when, in place of this same Autobiography with "fullest 
insight," we find — Six considerable Paper-bags, carefully 
sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China-ink, with the 
symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, beginning at 
Libra ; in the inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous 
masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and Snips, written in 
Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce legible an^siv-schrift ; and 
treatini^ of all imaijinable things under the Zodiac and above 
it, out of his own personal history only at rare intervals, and 
then in the most enigmatic manner. 

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, or, as 
he here, speaking in the third person, calls himself, *' the 
Wanderer," is not once named. Then again, amidst what 
seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, " De- 
tached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or, " The continued 
Possibility of Prophecy," we shall meet with some quite 
jjrivate, not unimportant Biographical fact. On certain 
sheets stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the circum- 
jacent waking Actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest 
without date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, 
like Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long purely 
Autobiographical delineations ; yet without connection, with- 
out recognizable coherence; so unimportant, so superflu- 
ously minute, they almost remind us of " P.P. Clerk of this 
Parish." Thus does famine of intelligence alternate with 
waste. Selection, order, appears to be unknown to the 
Professor. In all Bags the same imbroglio; only perhaps 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

in the Bag Capricorn^ and those near it, the confusion a 
little worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration, 
" On receiving the Doctor's-Hat," lie wash-bills, marked 
bezahlt (settled). His Travels are indicated by the Street- 
Advertisements of the various cities he has visited ; of 
which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, here is 
perhaps the completest collection extant. 

So that if the Clothes-Volume itself was too like a Chaos, 
we have now instead of the solar Luminary that should 
still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will farther 
volatilize and discompose it ! As we shall perhaps see it 
our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper-Bags in the 
British Museum, farther description, and all vituperation 
of them, may be spared. Biography or Autobiography of 
Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, none to be gleaned 
here : at most some sketchy, shadowy fugitive likeness of 
him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly 
of imagination, on the side of Editor and of Reader, rise up 
between them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that 
aqueous-chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six Bags 
hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated with 
our delineation of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green specta- 
cles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents from their 
perplexed airsiv-schriftj collating them with the almost 
equally unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible print. 
Over such a universal medley of high and low, of hot, cold, 
moist and dry, is he here struggling (by union of like with 
like, which is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British 
travellers. Never perhaps since our first Bridge-builders, 
Sin and Death, built that stupendous Arch from Hell-gate 
to the Earth, did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a 
Usk as the present Editor. For in this Arch too, leading, as 



PROSPECTIVE. 69 

we humbly presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval 
one, the materials are to be fished up from the weltering 
deep, and down from the simmering air, here one mass, 
there another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements 
boil beneath : nor is there any supeitiatural force to do it 
with ; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking Faculty 
of an English Editor, endeavoring to evolve printed Creation 
out of a German printed and written Chaos, wherein, as 
he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the 
Why to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole Faculty and 
Self are like to be swallowed up. 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, does 
the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise robust 
health declining; some fraction of his allotted natural sleep 
nightly leaving him, and little but an inflamed nervous-system - 
to be looked for. What is the use of health, or of life, 
if not to do some work therewith ? And what work nobler 
than transplanting foreign Thought into the barren domestic 
soil ; except indeed planting Thought of your own, which the 
fewest are privileged to do? Wild as it looks, this Philoso- 
phy of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises 
to reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and 
already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal History. 
Is not such a prize worth some striving? Forward with us, 
courageous reader ; be it towards failure, or towards success ! 
The latter thou sharest with us ; the former also is not all 
our own. 



BOOK SECOND. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENESIS. 



IN a psychological point of view, it is perhaps questionable 
whether from birth and genealogy, how closely scrutinized 
soever, much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, as in 
every phenomenon the Beginning remains always the most 
notable moment; so, with regard to any great man, we rest 
not till, for our scientific profit or not, the whole circum- 
stances of his first appearance in this Planet, and what man- 
ner of Public Entry he made, are with utmost completeness 
rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes-Philoso- 
pher, then, be this First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, 
indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure extraction ; uncer- 
tain, we might almost say, whether of any : so that this 
Genesis of his can properly be nothing but an Exodus 
(or transit out of Invisibihty into Visibility); whereof the 
prehminary portion is nowhere forthcoming! 

" In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in the Bag 
Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with difficulty, 
"dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; childless, in still 
seclusion, and cheerful though now verging towards old age. 
Andreas had been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental 
Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great ; but now, quitting 
70 



CE NESTS. 71 

the halbeit and ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, culti- 
vated a little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincin- 
natus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the peach, the 
apple, the grape, with other varieties came in their season ; 
all which Andreas knew how to sell : on evenings he smoked 
largely, or read (as beseemed a regimental Schoolmaster), 
and talked to neighbors that would listen about the Victory 
of Rossbach ; and how Fritz the Only {der Einzige) had 
once with his own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased 
to say, when iiVndreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass- 
word, ' Schweig Htind (Peace, hound) ! ' before any of his 
staff-adjutants could answer. ' Das ne7i}i' ich inir einen 
Konig^ There is what I call a King,' would Andreas exclaim : 
' but the smoke of Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes.' 

"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by the 
deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran Othello, 
lived not in altogether military subordination ; for, as Andreas 
said, *the womankind will not drill {wer kanii die Weiber- 
cheiL dressiren) : nevertheless she at heart loved him both 
for valor and wisdom; to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant 
and Regiment's Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero 
and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as 
infinite. Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of 
order, courage, downrightness {Geradheit) ; that understood 
Bijsching's Geography, had been in the victory of Rossbach, 
and left for dead in the camisade of Hochkirch ? The good 
Gretchen, for all her fretting, watched over him and hovered 
round him as only a true housemother can : assiduously she 
cooked and sewed and scoured for him; so that not only his 
old regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habi- 
tation and environment, where on pegs of honor they hung, 
looked ever trim and gay : a roomy painted Cottage, embow- 
ered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, evergreens and honey- 



T2 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

suckles ; rising many-colored from amid shaven grass-plots, 
flowers struggling-in through the very windows ; under its 
long projecting eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic 
piles (to screen them from rain), and seats where, especially 
on summer nights, a King might have wished to sit and 
smoke, and call it his. Such a Baicergut (Copyhold) had 
Gretchen given her veteran ; whose sinewy arms, and long- 
disused gardening talent, had made it what you saw. 

" Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow 
evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from terres- 
trial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible and radiant 
along the celestial Balance {Libra), it was that a Stranger of 
reverend aspect entered ; and, with grave salutation, stood 
before the two rather astonished housemates. He was close- 
muffled in a wide mantle; which without farther parley un- 
folding, he deposited therefrom what seemed some Basket, 
overhung with green Persian silk; saying only: Ihr lieben 
Letite^ hier bringe ein tinschdtzbares Verleiheji ; nehint es in 
aller Acht^ sorgfdltigst beniitzt es : mit hohem Lohn, oder 
wohl mit schweren Ziiisen, wird^s einst zuriickgefordert. 
* Good Christian people, here lies for you an invaluable 
Loan ; take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ it : 
with high recompense, or else with heavy penalty, will it one 
day be required back.' Uttering which singular words, rn a 
clear, bell-like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger grace- 
fully withdrew ; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in 
expectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or 
answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could aught 
of him be seen or heard; he had vanished in the thickets, 
in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood quietly closed: the 
Stranger was gone once and always. So sudden had the 
whole transaction been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, 
so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could have fancied it 




LIFTING THE GREEN VEIL TO SEE WHAT INVALUABLE 

IT HID." — Page 73. 



GE.VES/S. 73 

fill a trick of Imagination, or some visit from an authentic 
Spirit. Only that the green-silk Basket, such as neither 
Imagination nor authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still 
stood visible and tangible on their little parlor-table. To- 
wards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily 
turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see what 
invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down and rich 
white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, 
in the softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! Beside it, 
lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was 
never publicly known ; also a Taufschein (baptismal certifi- 
cate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was 
decipherable ; other document or indication none what- 
ever. 

'' To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and 
always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the morrow 
or next day, did tidings transpire of any such figure as the 
Stranger ; nor could the Traveller, who had passed through 
the neighboring Town in coach-and-four, be connected with 
this Apparition, except in the way of gratuitous surmise. 
Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical 
problem was : What to do with this little sleeping red- 
colored Infant.^ Amid amazements and curiosities, which 
had to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, 
as in such circumstances charitable prudent people needs 
must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, 
and if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled on 
their endeavor: thus lias that same mysterious Individual 
ever since had a status for himself in this visible Universe, 
some modicum of victual and lodging and parade-ground; 
and now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge of good 
and evil, he, -as IIerr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, pro- 
fesses or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new 
Science of Things in General." 

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should think 
he well might, that these facts, first communicated, by the 
good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, "produced on 
the boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible impression. 
Who this reverend Personage," he says, "that glided into 
the Orchard Cottage when the Sun was in Libra, and then, 
as on spirit's wings, glided out again, might be ? An inex- 
pressible desire, full of love and of sadness, has often since 
struggled within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my dis- 
tresses and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of long- 
ing (sehnsuchtsvoll\ to that unknown Father, who perhaps 
far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, might have 
taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened from 
many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost thou still, shut 
out from me only by thin penetrable curtains of earthly 
Space, wend to and fro among the crowd of the living ? Or 
art thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the Ever- 
lasting Night, or rather of the Everlasting Day, through 
which my mortal eye and outstretched arms need not strive 
to reach ? Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to 
know. More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee 
this and the other noble-looking Stranger; and approached 
him wistfully, with infinite regard ; but he too had to repel 
me, he too was not thou. 

"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries the Auto- 
biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, " wherein is my 
case peculiar ? Hadst thou, any more than I, a Father whom 
thou knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the Adam 
and Eve, who led thee into Life, and for a time suckled and 
pap-fed thee there, whom thou namest Father and Mother; 
these were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing- 



CEJVESiS. 75 

mother : thy true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom 
witli the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with 
the spiritual." 

''The little green veil," adds he, among much similar moral- 
izing, and embroiled discoursing, " I yet keep ; still more 
inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From the 
veil can nothing be inferred : a piece of now quite faded 
Persian silk, like thousands of others. On the Name I have 
many times meditated and conjectured ; but neither in this 
lay there any clew. That it was my unknown Father's name 
I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I searched 
through all the Herald's Books, in and without the German 
Empire, and through all manner of Subscriber-Lists {Prd- 
numeranten)^ Militia-Rolls, and other Name-catalogues ; 
extraordinary names as we have in Germany, the name 
Teufelsdrockh, except as appended to my own person, no- 
where occurs. Again, what may the unchristian rather than 
Christian * Diogenes ' mean? Did that reverend Basket- 
bearer intend, by such designation, to shadow-forth my 
future destiny, or his own present malign humor? Perhaps 
the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred Parent, who like 
an Ostrich hadst to leave thy ill-starred offspring to be 
hatched into self-support by the mere sky-infiuences of 
Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth one ? Beset 
by Misfortune thou doubtless hast been; or indeed by the 
worst figure of Misfortune, by Misconduct. Often have I 
fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at, and 
slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten 
and bedevilled by the Time-Spirit {Zeiti^eist)^ in thyself and 
others, till the good soul first given thee was seared into 
grim rage ; and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me 
an indignant appeal to the Future, and living speaking Pro- 
test against the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time 



^6 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

only, but of Time itself, is well named! Which Appeal and 
Protest, may I now modestly add, was not perhaps quite 
lost in air. 

" For indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there is 
much, nay almost all, in Names. The Name is the earliest 
Garment you wrap round the earth-visiting Me ; to which it 
thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are Names 
that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) than the very skin. 
And now from without, what mystic influences does it not 
send inwards, even to the centre ; especially in those plastic 
first-times, when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the 
invisible seedgrain will grow to be an all overshadowing 
tree ! Names } Could I unfold the influence of Names, 
which are the most important of all Clothings, I were a 
second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common Speech, 
but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou consider it, 
than a right N'aming. Adam's first task was giving names 
to natural Appearances : what is ours still but a. continuation 
of the same ; be the Appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, 
mechanic, stars, or starry movements (as in Science); or (as 
in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, Gods ? 
— In a very plain sense the Proverb says. Call one a thief ^ 
and he will steal ; in an almost similar sense may we not 
perhaps say, Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh^ a?id he will 
open the Philosophy of Clothes .^ " 

" Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, hke others, all igno- 
rant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was opening his 
eyes to the kind Light; sprawling-out his ten fingers and 
toes ; listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all his Five 
Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense of Hunger, and a 
whole infinitude of inward, spiritual, half-awakened Senses, 
endeavoring daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of 



GENESIS, yj 

this strange Universe where he had arrived, be his task 
therein what it might. Infinite was his progress ; thus in 
some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of — 
Speech ! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a 
fresh (celestial) Egg ; wherein as yet all is formless, power- 
less ; yet by degrees organic elements and fibres shoot 
through the watery albumen ; and out of vague Sensation 
grows Thought, grows Fantasy and P^orcc, and w^e have 
Philosophies, Dynasties, nay Poetries and Religions ! 

" Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by such 
diminutive had they in their fondness named him, travelled 
forward to those high consummations, by quick yet easy 
stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and moreover 
keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, gave-out that he was a 
grand-nephew ; the orphan of some sister's daughter, sud- 
denly deceased, in Andreas's distant Prussian birtliland ; of 
whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, little enough 
was known at Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurs- 
Vmg took to his spoon-meat, and throve. 1 have heard him 
noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself ; 
above all, that seldom or never cried. Me already felt that 
lime was precious ; that he had other work cut-out for him 
til an whimpering." 

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among 
these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we can 
gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More imperfect, 
more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The 
Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain 
satirical turn, and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for 
the present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt 
him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the "good 
Gretchen Futteral/' or some other perhaps interested party, 



78 ■ SARTOR RESARTUS, 

he has himself been deceived ? Should these sheets, trans- 
lated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating Library, 
some cultivated native of that district might feel called to 
afford explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, 
permeate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo itself is 
not safe from British Literature, may not some Copy find 
out even the mysterious basket-bearing Stranger, who in a 
state of extreme senility perhaps still exists ; and gently 
force even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in 
whom any father may feel pride ? 



^^ CHAPTER IL 

IDYLLIC. 

HAPPY season of Childhood ! " exclaims Teufelsdrockh ; 
" Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful mother; that 
visitest the poor man's hut with auroral radiance; and for 
thy Nursling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and 
infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, danced-round 
(Mi7igaukelt) by sweetest Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage 
still shuts us in, its roof still screens us ; with a Father we 
have as yet a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience 
that makes us free. The young spirit has awakened out of 
Eternity, and knows not what we mean by Time ; as yet Time 
is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean ; years 
to the child are as ages : ah ! the secret of Vicissitude, of that 
slower or quicker decay and ceaseless down-rushing of the 
universal World-fabric, from the granite mountain to the man 
or day-moth, is yet unknown; and in a motionless Universe, 
we taste, what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is 
forever denied us, the balm of Rest, Sleep on, thou fair 



IDYLLIC. 79 

Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand ! A little while, 
and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very dreams shall 
be mimic battles; thou too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to 
say in stern patience : 'Rest? Rest? Shall I not have all 
Eternity to rest in? ' Celestial Nepenthe ! though a l^yrrhus 
conquer emi)ires, and an Alexander sack the world, he finds 
thee not ; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, 
on the eyelids, on the heart of every mother's child. F'or as 
yet, sleep and waking are one : the fair Life-garden rustles 
infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and the 
budding of Hope ; which budding, if in youth, too frostnipt, 
it grow to tiowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a 
l)rickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the fewest can find 
the kernel." 

In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as Poets are 
wont, look back on his childhood; the historical details of 
which (to say nothing of much other vague oratorical matter) 
he accordingly dwells on with an almost wearisome minute- 
ness. We hear of Entepfuhl standing '• in trustful derange- 
ment '' among the woody slopes ; the paternal Orchard 
flanking it as extreme outpost from below ; the little Kuhbach 
gushing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after 
river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmos- 
phere and Universe; and how *' the brave old Linden," 
stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping 
all other rows and clumps, towered-up from the central Agora 
and Campus Martins of the Village, like its Sacred Tree ; 
and how the old men sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen 
often greedily listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, 
and the unwearied children sported, and the young men and 
maidens often danced to flute-music. '* Glorious summer 
twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the Sun, like a proud 
Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his back, with 



So SARTOR RESARTUS. 

his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his fireclad body-guard 
(of Prismatic Colors) ; and the tired brickmakers of this clay 
Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few meek Stars 
would not tell of them ! " 

Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), 
the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so forth ; with a whole 
cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing apparently 
by mere superficial shades from those of other countries. 
Concerning all which, we shall here, for obvious reasons, say 
nothing. What cares the world for our as yet miniature 
Philosopher's achievements under that *' brave old Linden " ? 
Or even where is the use of such practical reflections as the 
following? / '' In all the sports of Children, were it only in 
their wanton breakages and defacements, you shall discern 
a creative instinct (j'c://(^^;2(^67^ Trieb): the Manikin feels that 
he is a born Man, that his vocation is to work: The choicest 
present you can make him is a Tool ; be it knife or pen-gun, 
for construction or for destruction ; either way it is for 
Work, for Change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength, 
the Boy trains himself to Co-operation, for war or peace, as 
governor or governed : the little Maid again, provident of 
her domestic destiny, takes with preference to Dolls." 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, considering 
who it is that relates it : '^ My first short-clothes were of 
yellow serge ; or rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, for 
the vesture was one and indivisible, reaching from neck to 
ankle, a mere body with four limbs : of which fashion how 
little could I then divine the architectural, how much less 
the moral significance ! " 

More graceful is the following little picture : " On fine 
evenings I was wont to carry-forth my supper (bread-crumb 
boiled in milk), and eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of 
the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, or still 




'ON- THK COMNG OK IHK ORCII A kIi-\VALL."— /V/^'V 8o. 



IDYLLIC. 8 1 

more easily if Father Andreas would set-up the pruning- 
ladder, my porringer was placed : there, many a sunset, have 
I. looking at the distant western Mountains, consumed, not 
without relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and 
azure, that hush of World's expectation as Day died, were 
still a Hebrew Speech for me ; nevertheless I was looking 
at the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their 
gilding." 

With '' the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry " 
we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby 
he acquired a " certain deeper sympathy with animated 
Nature : " but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a collec- 
tion of Biographical Documents, such a piece as this : 
" Impressive enough {bedeiituiigsvoll) was it to hear, in early 
morning, the Swineherd's horn ; and know that so many 
hungry happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting in hot 
haste to join him, for breakfast on the Heath. Or to see 
them at eventide, all march ing-in again, with short squeak, 
almost in military order; and each, topographically correct, 
trotting-off in succession to the right or left, through its own 
lane, to its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, 
now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the night. 
We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the form of Ham ; 
yet did not these bristly thick-skinned beings here manifest 
intelligence, perhaps humor of character; at any rate, a 
touching, trustful submissiveness to Man, — who, were he 
but a Swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches 
more resembling slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the 
Hierarch of this lower world?" 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an infant 
of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that 
certain suprisingly favorable influences accompany him 
through life, especially through childhood, and expand him, 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

while others lie closefolded and continue dunces. Herein, 
say they, consists the whole difference between an inspired 
Prophet and a double-barrelled Game-preserver: the inner 
man of the one has been fostered into generous develop- 
ment ; that of the other, crushed-down perhaps by vigor of 
animal digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, 
or at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom 
of his stomach. With which opinion,'' cries Teufelsdrockh, 
''I should as soon agree as wilh this other, that an acorn 
might, by favorable or unfavorable influences of soil and 
climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into 
an oak. 

" Nevertheless," continues he, " I too acknowledge the 
ail-but omnipotence of early culture and nurture : hereby we 
have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, wide- 
shadowing tree ; either a sick yellow cabbage, or an edible 
luxuriant green one. Of a truth, it is the duty of all men, 
especially of all philosophers, to note-down with accuracy 
the characteristic circumstances of their Education, what 
furthered, what hindered, what in any way modified it : to 
which duty, nowadays so pressing for many a German Auto- 
biographer, I also zealously address myself." — Thou rogue ! 
Is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and swineherd horns, 
that an infant of genius is educated? And yet, as usual, it 
ever remains doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve 
at these Autobiographical times of ours, or writing from the 
abundance of his own fond ineptitude. For he continues : 
'^ If among the ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings, 
Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, 
young Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to 
select and specify, perhaps these following were also of the 
number : 

" Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, Activity, 




KA<;i-:ici.v I III N(. i;i()N ms 'i ai.i:s.''— /Vi'.vv 8^ 



i 



invrjjc. 8 



so the young creature's Imagination was stirred up, and 
a Historical tendency given him by the narrative habits of 
Father Andreas ; who, with his battle-reminiscences, and 
gray austere yet hearty patriarchal aspect, could not but 
appear another Ulysses and ^mucli-enduring Man.' Eagerly 
I hung upon his tales, when listening neighbors enlivened 
the hearth ; from these perils and these travels, wild and far 
almost as Hades itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded 
itself within me. Incalculable also was the knowledge I 
acquired in standing by the Old Men under the Linden-tree : 
the whole of Inirnensity was yet new to me ; and had not 
these reverend seniors, talkative enough, been employed in 
partial surveys thereof for nigh fourscore years ? With 
amazement I began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the 
middle of a Country, of a World ; that there was such a 
tiling as History, as Biography ; to which I also, one day, by 
hand and tongue, might contribute. 

"In a like sense worked the Postwai^en (Stage-coach), 
which, slow-rolling under its mountains of men and luggage, 
wended through our Village : northwards, truly, in the dead 
of night ; yet southwards visibly at eventide. Not till my 
eighth year did I reflect that this Postwagen could be other 
than some terrestrial Moon, rising and setting by mere Law 
of Nature, like the heavenly one ; that it came on made 
highways, from far cities towards far cities; weaving them 
like a monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It 
was then that, independently of Schiller's Wilhchti Tell, I 
made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also in 
spiritual things) : A7iy ?'oact this simple Entepfuhl 7'oad^ will 
lead you to the e?id of the World I 

*' Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa, as 
I learned, threading their way over seas and mountains, 
corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly found them- 



84 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

selves, with the month of May, snug-loclged in our Cottage 
Lobby ? The hospitable Father (for cleanliness' sake) had 
fixed a little bracket plumb under their nest : there they 
built, and caught flies, and twittered, and bred ; and all, I 
chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, nimble crea- 
tures, who taught yoit the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, 
gave you a masonic incorporation, almost social police? 
For if, by ill chance, and when time pressed, your House 
fell, have I not seen five neighborly Helpers appear next 
day; and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long- 
drawn chirpings, and activity almost superhirundine, com- 
plete it again before nightfall ? 

"But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl 
child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold influences 
were concentrated and simultaneously poured-down on us, 
was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling from all the 
four winds, came the elements of an unspeakable hurlyburly. 
Nutbrown maids and nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud 
laughing, bedizened and beribanded; who came for dancing, 
for treating, and if possible, for happiness. Topbooted 
Graziers from the North ; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, 
also topbooted, from the South ; these with their subalterns 
in leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long oxgoads ; 
shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate bark 
ing and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, 
with their crockery in fair rows ; Niirnberg Peddlers, in 
booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz bazars ; 
Showmen from the Lago Maggiore ; detachments of the 
Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) vociferously super 
intending games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed. Auc- 
tioneers grew hoarse ; cheap New Wine (Jieuriger) flowed 
like water, still worse confounding the confusion; and high 
over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a party-colored 







"WAITEI)-ON BY THE FOLK GOLDEN SEASONS.''— /Vz^^ 85, 



IDYLLIC. 85 

Merry- An drew, like tlie genius of the place and of Life 
itself. 

"Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence; under the 
deep heavenly Firmament; waited-on by the four golden 
Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, for even 
grim Winter brouglit its skating-matches and shooting- 
matches, its snow-storms and Christmas-carols, — did the 
Child sit and learn. These things were the Alphabet, 
whereby in after-time he was to syllable and partly read the 
grand V^olume of the World : what matters it whether such 
Alphabet be in large gilt letters or in small ungilt ones, so 
you have an eye to read it 1 For Gneschen, eager to learn, 
the very act of looking thereon was a blessedness that 
gilded all: his existence was a bright, soft element of Joy; 
out of which, as in Prosperous Island, wonder after wonder 
bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. 

" Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to say, that 
even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come 
down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rainbow 
colors that glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood a 
dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a thread, and often 
quite overshone; yet always it re-appeared, nay ever waxing 
broader and broader; till in after-years it almost over- 
shadowed my whole canopy, and threatened to engulf me in 
final night. It was the ring of Necessity whereby we are 
all begirt; happy he for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens 
it into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful 
prismatic diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for 
our whole being, it is there. 

" For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprenticeship, 
we have not much work to do ; but, boarded and lodged gratis, 
are set down mostly to look about us over the workshop, 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and see others work, till we have understood the tools a 
little, and can handle this and that. If good Passivity alone, 
and not good Passivity and good Activity together, were the 
thing wanted, then was my early position favorable beyond 
the most. In all that respects openness of Sense, affec- 
tionate Temper, ingenuous Curiosity, and the fostering of 
these, what more could I have wished.^ On the other side, 
however, things went not so well. My Active Power {That- 
kraft) was unfavorably hemmed-in ; of which misfortune 
how many traces yet abide with me ! In an orderly house, 
where the litter of children's sports is hateful enough, your 
training is too stoical ; rather to bear and forbear than to 
make and do. I was forbid much : wishes in any measure 
bold I had to renounce ; everywhere a strait bond of 
Obedience inflexibly held me down. Thus already Freewill 
often came in painful collision with Necessity ; so that my 
tears flowed, and at seasons the Child itself might taste that 
root of bitterness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life 
is mingled and tempered. 

"In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was beyond 
measure safer to err by excess than by defect. Obedience 
is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein whoso will not 
bend must break : too early and too thoroughly we cannot 
be trained to know that Would, in this world of ours, is as 
mere zero to Should, and for most part as the smallest of 
fractions even to Shall. Hereby was laid for me the basis 
of worldly Discretion, nay of Morality itself. Let me not 
quarrel with my upbringing. It was rigorous, too frugal, 
compressively secluded, everyway unscientific : yet in that 
very strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie the 
root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all 
noble fruit must grow .'^ Above all, how unskilful soever, 
it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; whereby every 



PEDAGOGY. 87 

deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such I 
must ever love the good Grctchen, did me one altogether 
invaluable service : she taught me, less indeed by word than 
by act and daily reverent look and habitude, her own simple 
version of the Christian Faith. Andreas too attended 
Church ; yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the 
other world expected pay with arrears, — as, I trust, he has 
received ; but my Mother, with a true woman's heart, and 
fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest accepta- 
tion Religious How indestructibly the Good grows, and 
propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of 
Evil ! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw 
bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher in 
Heaven: such things, especially in infancy, reach inwards to 
the very core of your being; mysteriously does a Holy 
of Holies build itself into visibility in the mysterious deeps; 
and Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth undying 
from its mean envelopment of Fear. Wouldst thou rather 
be a peasant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there 
was a God in Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's son that 
only knew there were two-and-thirty quarters on the family- 
coach .^ " 

To which last question we must answer : Beware, O 
Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride ! 



CHAPTER III. 

PEDAGOGY. 

HITHERTO we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible 
case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the 
arms of kind Nature alone ; seated, indeed, and much to 



88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

his mind, in the terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft 
hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a still 
intelligence) called upon for Httle voluntary movement there. 
Hitherto, accordingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of 
an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract ; perhaps 
it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein 
the special Doctrine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or 
betokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the Man 
may indeed stand pictured in the Boy (at least all the 
pigments are there); yet only some half of the Man stands 
in the Child, or young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, 
not his Active. The more impatient are we to discover 
what figure he cuts in this latter capacity ; how, when, to 
use his own words, " he understands the tools a little, and 
can handle this or that," he will proceed to handle it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in much of 
our Philosopher's history, there is something of an almost 
Hindoo character : nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and 
everyway excellent ^'Passivity" of his, which, with no free 
development of the antagonist Activity, distinguished his 
childhood, we may detect the rudiments of much that, in 
after days, and still in these present days, astonishes the 
world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a 
man without Activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep- 
sighted, again, a man with Activity almost superabundant, 
yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can 
foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so 
much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult 
temper for the modern European ; above all, disadvantageous 
in the hero of a Biography ! Now as heretofore it will 
behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so unsuccess- 
fully, to do his endeavor. 

Anaong the earliest tools of any complicacy which a man. 




MEANWHILK WHAT I'KINTED THING SOEVER 1 COULD MEET 

WITH I READ." — Page 89. 



PEDAGOGY. 8g 

especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his Class- 
books. On this portion of his History, Teufelsdrockh 
looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he "cannot 
remember ever to have learned ; " so perhaps had it by 
nature. He says generally: '* Of the insignificant portion 
of my Education, which depended on Schools, there need 
almost no notice be taken. I learned what others learn; 
and kept it stored-by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet 
no manner of use in it. My Schoolmaster, a downbent, 
brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, 
did little for me, except discover that he could do little : 
he, good soul, pronounced me a genius, fit for the learned 
professions ; and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, 
and one day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed 
thing soever I could meet with I read. My very copper 
pocket-money I laid-out on stall-literature ; which, as it 
accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. 
By this means was the young head furnished with a consid- 
erable miscellany of things and shadows of things : History 
in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous chimeras, 
wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, 
but as living pabulum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet 
so peptic." 

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well, we now 
know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with all 
his outward stillness, there may have been manifest an 
inward vivacity that promised much ; symptoms of a spirit 
singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, to say 
nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and other 
phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers of 
these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such reflec- 
tions as the following.'* "It struck me much, as I sat by 
the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched it flowing, 



go SARTOR RESARTUS. 

gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed and 
gurgled, through all changes of weather and of fortune, from 
beyond the earliest date of History. Yes, probably on the 
morning when Joshua forded Jordan f even as at the mid-day 
when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet 
kept his Commentaries dry, — this little Kuhbach, assiduous 
as Tiber, Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the 
wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen: Jiere, too, as in the 
Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet of the grand 
World-circulation of Waters, which, with its atmospheric 
arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with the World. Thou, 
fool ! Nature alone is antique, and the oldest art a mush- 
room ; that idle crag thou sittest on is six thousand years of 
age." In which little thought, as in a little fountain, may 
there not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unutterable 
meditations on the grandeur and mystery of Time, and its 
relation to Eternity, which play such a part in this 
Philosophy of Clothes ? 

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor by 
no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his childhood. 
Green sunny tracts there are still; but intersected by bitter 
rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating into sour marshes 
of discontent. "With my first view of the Hinterschlag 
Gymnasium," writes he, " my evil days began. Well do I 
still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide morning, when, 
trotting full of hope by the side of Father Andreas, I entered 
the main street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then 
striking Eight) and Schuldthurin (Jail), and the aproned or 
disaproned Burghers moving-in to breakfast : a little dog, in 
mad terror, was rushing past ; for some human imps had 
tied a tin-kettle to its tail ; thus did the agonized creature, 
loud - jingling, career through the whole length of the 
Borough, and become notable enough. Fit emblem of many 



PEDAGOGY. 91 

a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fantasy to 
Sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malignantly appended 
a tin-kettle of Ambition, to chase him on ; which the faster 
he runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and more 
foolishly! Fit emblem also of much that awaited myself, in 
that mischievous Den ; as in the World, whereof it was a 
portion and epitome ! 

*' Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden in 
the distance : I was among strangers, harshly, at best 
indifferently, disposed towards me; the young heart felt, 
for the first time, quite orphaned and alone." His school- 
fellows, as is usual, persecuted him : " They were Boys," he 
says, " mostly rude Boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude 
Nature, which bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, 
the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged brother or 
sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannize over the weak." 
He admits, that though "perhaps in an unusual degree 
morally courageous," he succeeded ill in battle, and would 
fain have avoided it; a result, as would appear, owing less to 
his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons he was 
"incredibly nimble"), than to his "virtuous principles:" 
" if it was disgraceful to be beaten," says he, " it was only a 
shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus was 
I drawn two ways at once, and in this important element of 
school-history, the war-element, had little but sorrow." On 
the whole, that same excellent " Passivity," so notable in 
Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here visibly enough again 
getting nourishment. "He wept often; indeed to such a 
degree that he was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), 
which epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed 
not quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the young 
soul burst-forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness 
{Uui!;cstiim) under which the boldest quailed, assert that he 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

too had Rights of Man, or at least of Mankin." In all 
which, who does not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon 
tree (of genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed-grass 
and ignoble shrubs ; and forced if it would live, to struggle 
upwards only, and not outwards ; into a height quite sickly, 
and disproportioned to its breadth ? 

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
" mechanically " taught ; Hebrew scarce even mechanically ; 
much else which they called History, Cosmography, Philos- 
ophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So that, except 
inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and he himself "went 
about, as was of old his wont, among the Craftsmen's work- 
shops, there learning many things ; " and farther lighted on 
some small store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the 
Cooper's house, where he lodged, — his time, it would 
appear, was utterly wasted. Which facts the Professor has 
not yet learned to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, 
throughout the whole of this Bag Scorpio^ where we now 
are, and often in the following Bag, he shows himself 
unusually animated on the matter of Education, and not 
without some touch of what we might presume to be anger. 
I "My Teachers," says he, "were hide-bound Pedants, 
without knowledge of man's nature, or of boy's ; or of aught 
save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. Innumer- 
able dead Vocables (no dead Language, for they themselves 
knew no Language) they crammed into us, and called it 
fostering the growth of mind. How can an inanimate, 
mechanical Gerund-grinder, the like of whom will, in a sub- 
sequent century, be manufactured at Niirnberg out of wood 
and leather, foster the growth of any thing; much more of 
Mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots 
littered with etymological compost), but like a spirit, by 
mysterious contact of Spirit ; Thought kindling itself at the 



PEDAGOGY, 93 

fire of living Thoui^lit? How sliall he give kindling, in 
whose own inward man there is no live coal, but all is burnt- 
out to a dead grammatical cinder ? The Hinterschlag Pro- 
lessors knew syntax enough; and of the human soul thus 
much: that it had a faculty called Memory, and could Le 
actod-on through the muscular integument by appliance of 
birch-rods. ) 

*' Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be; till the 
Hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing ; and an 
Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly encouraged : till 
communities and individuals discover, not without surprise, 
that fashioning the souls of a generation by Knowledge can 
rank on a level with blowing their bodies to pieces by Gun- 
powder; that with Generals and Fieldmarshals for killing, 
there should be world-honored Dignitaries, and were it 
possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But as 
yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even parades, his 
butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have travelled, did the 
Schoolmaster make show of his instructing-tool : nay, were 
he to walk abroad with birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom 
expected honor, would there not, among the idler class, 
perhaps a certain levity be excited ?"/ 

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, Father Andreas 
seems to have died : the young Scholar, otherwise so mal- 
treated, saw himself for the first time clad outwardly in 
sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. 
" The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under our feet, had 
yawned open ; the pale kingdoms of Death, with all their 
innumerable silent nations and generations, stood before 
him ; the inexorable word, Never ! now first showed its 
meaning. iVIy Mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but 
in my heart there lay a whole lake of tears, pent-up in silent 
desolation. Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life 



94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death : these 
stern experiences, planted down by Memory in my Imagina- 
tion, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful ; 
waving, with not unmelodious sighs, in dark luxuriance, in 
the hottest sunshine, through long years of youth: — as 
in manhood also it does, and will do ; for I have now pitched 
my tent under a Cypress-tree ; the Tomb is now my inex- 
pugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate of which I look 
upon the hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of 
tyrannous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest 
threatenings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that 
already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life I 
could only weep for and never help ; and ye, who wide- 
scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, 
dyeing the flinty ground with your blood, — yet a little while, 
and we shall all meet there, and our Mother's bosom will 
screen us all ; and Oppression's harness, and Sorrow's fire- 
whip, and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit 
ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth harm us any more ! " 

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a labored 
Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; of his natural 
ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant); with long 
historical inquiries into the genealogy of the Futteral 
Family, here traced back as far as Henry the Fowler: the 
whole of which we pass over, not without astonishment. It 
only concerns us to add, that now was the time when Mother 
Gretchen revealed to her foster-son that he was not at all of 
this kindred ; or indeed of any kindred, having come into 
historical existence in the way already known to us. " Thus 
was I doubly orphaned," says he ; '' bereft not only of 
Possession, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Won- 
der, here suddenly united, could not but produce abundant 
fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck its roots 



PEDAGOGY, 95 

through my whole nature : ever till the years of mature 
manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, was as the 
stem whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams grew. 
A certain poetic elevation, yet also a corresponding civic 
depression, it naturally imparted: / was like no other j in 
which fixed-idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener 
to frightfullest results, may there not lie the first spring 
of tendencies, which in my Life have become remarkable 
enough ? As in birth, so in action, speculation, and' social 
position, my fellows are perhaps not numerous." 

In the Bag Sagztta?'ius, as we at length discover, Teufels- 
drockh has become a University man ; though how, when, 
or of what quality, will nowhere disclose itself with the 
smallest certainty. Few things, in the way of confusion and 
capricious indistinctness, can now surprise our readers; not 
even the total want of dates, almost without parallel in a 
Biographical work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always 
found, and must always look to find, these scattered Leaves. 
In Sai^ittarius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show 
himself even more than usually Sibylline : fragments of all 
sorts; scraps of regular Memoir, College-Exercises, Pro- 
grammes, Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, 
sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast; all blown 
together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the 
sane Historian. To combine any picture of these Univer- 
sity, and the subsequent, years ; much more, to decipher 
therein any illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes- 
Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may 
imagine. 

So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage of 
some wavering thicket: a youth of no common endowment, 
who has passed happily through Childhood, less happily yet 



96 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

still vigorously through Boyhood, now at length perfect in 
*' dead vocables," and set down, as he hopes, by the living 
Fountain, there to superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From 
such Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet never or 
seldom with his whole heart, for the water nowise suits his 
palate; discouragements, entanglements, aberrations are 
discoverable or supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecu- 
niary distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who in 
spite of advices from not disinterested relatives has sent 
him hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too 
feeble hand. " Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty 
and manifold Chagrin, the Humor of that young Soul, what 
character is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like 
strong sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colors, 
some of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of Time 
and ot what Time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufels- 
drockh waxed into manly stature ; and into so questionable 
an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness. How he specially 
came by it, and regret anew that there is no more explicit 
answer. Certain of the intelligible and partially significant 
fragments, which are few in number, shall be extracted from 
that Limbo of a Paper-bag, and presented with the usual 
preparation. 

As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not already 
expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, from the name 
Sagittarius, he had thought himself called upon to shoot 
arrows, we here again fall-in with such matter as this : '^ The 
University where I was educated still stands vivid enough 
in my remembrance, and I know its name well ; w^hich name, 
however, I, from tenderness to existing interests and per- 
sons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say 
that, out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all 
hitherto discovered Universities. /This is indeed a time 



PEDAGOGY, 97 

when right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible : 
however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit: nay, I 
can conceive a worse system than that of the Nameless 
itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than absolute 
hunger. 

"It is written. When the blind lead the blind, both shall 
fall into the ditch : wherefore, in such circumstances, may it 
not sometimes be safer, if both leader and led simply — sit 
still? Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled-in a 
square enclosure ; furnished it with a small, ill-chosen Libra- 
ry : and then turned loose into it eleven-hundred Christian 
strvplings, to tumble about as they listed, from three to seven 
years : certain persons, under the title of Professors, being 
stationed at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a Univer- 
sitv, and exact considerable admission-fees, — you had, not 
indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit and result, some 
imperfect resemblance of our High Seminary. I say, im- 
perfect ; for if our mechanical structure was quite other, so 
neither was our result altogether the same : unhappily, we 
were not in Crim Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, 
full of smoke and sin ; moreover, in the middle of a Public, 
which, without far costlier apparatus than that of the Square 
Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure of 
gulling. ■ 

'' Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ; and 
gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards any thing 
like a Statistics of Imposture^ indeed, little as yet has been 
done : with a strange indifference, our Economists, nigh 
buried under Tables for minor Branches of Industry, have 
altogether overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy 
Branch; as if our wliole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, 
Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and 
mysteries of that genus, liad not ranked in Productive 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Industry at all ! Can any one, for example, so much as say, 
What moneys, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are realized 
by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish ; what by ficti- 
tious-persuasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in distinct 
items, the distributions, circulations, disbursements, incom- 
ings of said moneys, with the smallest approach to accuracy? 
But to ask, How far, in all the several infinitely-complected 
departments of social business, in government, education, in 
manual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, 
man's Want is supplied by true Ware ; how far by the mere 
Appearance of true Ware : — in other words, To what extent, 
by what methods, with what effects, in various times and 
countries. Deception takes the place of wages of Perform- 
ance : here truly is an Inquiry big with results for the 
future time, but to which hitherto only the vaguest answer 
can be given. If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate 
the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware so high even 
as at One to a Hundred (which, considering the Wages of a 
Pope, Russian Autocrat, or English Game-Preserver, is 
probably not far from the mark), — what almost prodigious 
saving may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics of 
Imposture advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams 
(that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinction 
therefrom) gradually declines, and at length becomes all but 
wholly unnecessary ! 

*' This for the coming golden ages. What I had to remark, 
for the present brazen one, is, that in several provinces, as 
in Education, Polity, Religion, where so much is wanted and 
indispensable, and so little can as yet be furnished, probably 
Imposture is of sanative, anodyne nature, and man's Gulli- 
bility not his worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war 
quite broken ; I mean your military chest insolvent, forage 
all but exhausted ; ^nd that the whole army is about to 



PEDAGOGY, 99 

mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat, — 
then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, pay them 
in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagulated water, or 
mere imagination of meat ; whereby, till the real supply came 
up, they might be kept together and quiet? Such perhaps 
was the aim of Nature, who does nothing without aim, in 
furnishing her favorite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or 
rather omnipatient Talent of being Gulled. 

** How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism; nay, 
almost makes mechanism for itself! These Professors in 
the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Repu- 
tation, constructed in past times, and then too with no great 
effort, by quite another class of persons. Which Reputation, 
like a strong, brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the 
general current, bade fair, with only a little annual repainting 
on their part, to hold long together, and of its own accord 
assiduously grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the 
Millers I Tliey themselves needed not to work; their 
attempts at working, at what they called Educating, now 
when 1 look back on it, fill me with a certain mute admira- 
tion. 

** Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a Rational Univer- 
sity : in the highest degree hostile to Mysticism ; thus was 
the young vacant mind furnished with much talk about Prog- 
ress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, and the like ; 
so that all were quickly enough blown out into a state of 
windy argumentativeness ; wherel)y the Ijettersort had soon 
to end in sick, impotent Scepticism; the worser sort explode 
(creplren) in finished Self-conceit, and to all spiritual intents 
become dead. — But tliis too is portion of mankind's lot. If 
our era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is 
there not a better coming, nay come ? As in long drawn 
systole and long-drawn diastole, must the period of Faith 



100 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

alternate with the period of Denial ; must the vernal growth^ 
the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, Spiritual Represen- 
tations and Creations, be followed by, and again follow, the 
autumnal decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in 
Time, has his whole earthly being, endeavor and destiny 
shaped for him by Time : only in the transitory Time-Symbol 
is the ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. 
And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the 
nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have been 
born, and to be awake and work ; and for the duller a felicity, 
if, like hibernating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca 
University, or Sybaris City, or other superstitious or volup- 
tuous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber-through, in 
stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud-roaring hail- 
storms have all done their work, and to our prayers and 
martyrdoms the new Spring has been vouchsafed." 

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough 
shadowed forth, Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at ease, 
cannot be doubtful. " The hungry young," he says, "looked 
up to their spiritual Nurses ; and, for food, were bidden 
eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of controversial 
Metaphysic, Etymology, and mechanical Manipulation falsely 
named Science, was current there, I indeed learned, better 
perhaps than the most. Among eleven-hundred Christian 
youths, there will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. 
By collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish 
was communicated ; by instinct and happy accident, I took 
less to rioting {renoininiren\ than to thinking and reading, 
which latter also I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of 
that Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books perhaps 
than had been known to the very keepers thereof. The 
foundation of a Literary Life was hereby laid : I learned, 
on my own strength, to read fluently in almost all cultivated 




■IN TMK SILENT NH ;„,- WATCH KS, UK i.AS (AST ni.MSl., ,. BhH>KK THE 
ALL-.SEEJ.\(,.'' — rage loi. 



PEDAGOGY. lOI 

languages, on almost all subjects and sciences; farther, as 
man is ever the prime object to man, already it was \wy^ 
favorite employment to read character in speculation, and 
from the Writing to construe the Writer. A certain ground- 
plan of Human Nature and Life began to fashion itself in 
me: wondrous enough, now when I lookback on it; for my 
whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a Machine ! 
However, such a conscious, recognized groundplan, the truest 
I had, was beginning to be there, and by additional ex[)eri- 
nients miglit be corrected and indefinitely extended." 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler wealth ; 
thus in the destitution of the wild desert does our young 
Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of all possessions, 
that of Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, waste, 
and howling with savage monsters. Teufelsdrockh gives us 
long details of his "fever-paroxysms of Doubt;" his Inqui- 
ries concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of religious 
Faith: and how "in the silent night-watches, still darker in 
his heart than over sky and earth, he has cast himself before 
the All-seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently 
for Light, for deliverance from Death and the Grave. Not 
till after long^years, and unspeakable agonies, did the l)e- 
lieving heart surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under 
the nightmare. Unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden dream, 
mistake God^s fair living world for a pallid, vacant Hades 
and extinct Pandemonium. ^But through such Purgatory 
pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to pass; first must 
the dead Letter of Religion own itself dead, and drop 
piecemeal into dust, if the living Spirit of Religion, freed 
from this its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of 
Heaven, and with new healing under its wingsJ' 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, if 
we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want of 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, want 
pf hope ; and all this in the fervid season of youth, so 
exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet here 
so poor in means, — do we not see a strong incipient spirit 
oppressed and overloaded from without and from within ; the 
fire of genius struggling-up among fuel-wood of the greenest, 
and as yet with more of bitter vapor than of clear flame ? 

From various fragments of Letters and other documentary 
scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, isolated, 
shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether escaped notice : 
certain established men are aware of his existence; and, if 
stretching-out no helpful hand, have at least their eyes on 
him. He appears, though in dreary enough humor, to be 
addressing himself to the Profession of Law ; — whereof, 
indeed, the w^orld has since seen him a public graduate. 
But omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of 
Economical relation, let us present rather the following 
small thread of Moral relation ; and therewith, the reader 
for himself weaving it in at the right place, conclude our dim 
arras-picture of these University years. 

"Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with Herr 
Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written^ Herr Tough- 
gut; a young person of quality {vo?i Adel\ from the interior 
parts of England. He stood connected, by blood and hospi- 
tality, with the "Counts von Zahdarm, in this quarter of 
Germany ; to which noble Family I likewise was, by his 
means, with all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had a 
fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated ; with considerable 
humor of character : and, bating his total ignorance, for he 
knew nothing except Boxing and a little Grammar, showed 
less of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for 
most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him I 
owe my first practical knowledge of the English and their 



PEDAGOGY. 103 

ways ; perhaps also something of the partiality with which I 
have ever since regarded that singular people. Towgocd 
was not without an eye, could he have come at any light. 
Invited doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm Family, he 
had travelled hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting 
his studies ; he, whose studies had as yet been those of 
infancy, hither to a University where so much as the notion 
of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no longer existed ! 
Often we would condole over the hard destiny of the Young 
in this era: how, after all our toil, we were to be turned-out 
into the world, with beards on our chins indeed, but with 
few other attributes of manhood; no existing thing that we 
were trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as 
Believe: * How has our head on the outside a polished 
Hat,' would Towgood exclaim, ' and in the inside Vacancy, 
or a froth of Vocables and Attorney-Logic ! At a small 
cost men are educated to make leather into shoes ; but at a 
great cost, what am I educated to make ? By Heaven, 
Brother ! what I have already eaten and worn, as I came 
thus far, would endow a considerable Hospital of Incura- 
bles.' — 'Man, indeed,' I would answer, Mias a Digestive 
Faculty, which must be kept working, were it even partly by 
stealth. But as for our Mis-education, make not bad worse; 
waste not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles because 
they have yielded us no figs. Frisch zii Bruder f Here are 
Books, and we have brains to read them ; here is a whole 
Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on 
them : Frisch zu f 

*' Often also our talk was gay; not without brilliancy, and 
even fire. We looked-out on Life, with its strange scaffolding, 
where all at once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded 
and quartered : motley, not unterrific was the aspect ; but we 
looked on it like brave youths. For myself, these were 



I04 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

perhaps my most genial hours. Towards this yoang warm- 
hearted, strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Towgood I 
was even near experiencing the now obsolete sentiment of 
Friendship. Yes, foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, 
under certain conditions, I could have loved this man, and 
taken him to my bosom, and been his brother once and 
always. By degrees, however, I understood the new time, 
and its wants. If man's Soitl is indeed, as in the Finnish 
Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomachy 
what else is the true meaning of Spiritual Union but an 
Eating together? Thus we, instead of Friends, are Dinner- 
guests ; and here as elsewhere have cast away chimeras." 

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this little 
incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of the brave 
Herr Towgood, or Toughgut ? He has dived-under, in the 
Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see not where. 
Does any reader ^' in the interior parts of England " know 
of such a man? 

CHAPTER IV. 

GETTING UNDER WAY. 

THUS nevertheless," writes our Autobiographer, ap- 
parently as quitting College, " was there realized 
Somewhat ; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh : a visible 
Temporary Figure {Zeitbild\ occupying some cubic feet of 
Space, and containing within it Forces both physical and 
spiritual ; hopes, passions, thoughts ; the wdiole wondrous 
furniture, in more or less perfection, belonging to that 
mystery, a Man. Capabilities there were in me to give 
battle, in some small degree, against the great Empire of 
Darkness : does not the very Ditcher and Delver, with his 
spade, extinguish many a thistle and puddle ; and so leave a 



GETTIXG UNDER WAY. 105 

little Order, where he found the opposite ? Nay your very 
Daymoth has capabilities in this kind: and ever organizes 
something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which was 
before Inorganic : and of mute dead air makes living music, 
though only of the faintest, by humming. 

"How much more, one whose capabilities are spiritual; 
wh(^ has learned, or begun learning, the grand thaumaturgic 
art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name it; for hitherto 
all Miracles have been wrought thereby, and henceforth 
innumerable will be wrought; whereof we, even in these 
days, witness some. Of the Poet's and Prophet's inspired 
Message, and how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I 
shall forbear mention : but cannot the dullest hear Steam- 
engines clanking around him ? Has he not seen the Scottish 
Biassmith's Idea (and this but a mechanical one) travelling 
on fire-wings round the Cape, and across two Oceans ; and 
stronger than any other Enchanter's Familiar, on all hands 
unweariedly fetching and carrying : at home, not only weav- 
ing Cloth ; but rapidly enough overturning the whole old 
system of Society ; and, for Feudalism and Preservation of 
the Game, preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, 
Industrialism and the Government of the Wisest?/ Truly 
a Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness 
can have ; every time such a one announces himself, I doul^t 
not, there runs a shudder through the Nether Empire : and 
new Emissaries are trained, with new tactic^, to, if possible, 
entrap him, and hoodwink and handcuff hini>. 

" With such high vocation had I too, a*^ denizen of the 
Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, that though 
born to the ami)lest Sovereignty, in this way, with no less 
than sovereign right of Peace and War against the Time- 
Prince {Zcitfurst\ or Devil, and all his Dominions, your 
coronation-ceremony costs such trouble, your sceptre is so 
difficult to get at, or even to get eye on ! " 



Io6 3ART0R RESARTUS. 

By which last wiredrawn similitude does Teufelsdrockh 
mean no more than that young men find obstacles in what we 
call *' getting under way '' ? r Not what I Have," continues 
he, *'but what I Do is my Kingdom, j To each is given 
a certain inward Talent, a certain outward Environment of 
Fortune ; to each, by wisest combination of these two, a 
certain maximum of Capability. But the hardest problem 
were ever this first : To find by study of yourself, and of 
the ground you stand on, what your combined inward and 
outward Capability specially is. For, alas, our young soul 
is all budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet which is 
the main and true one. Always too the new man is in a 
new time, under new conditions ; his course can be the 
fac-si?nile of no prior one, but is by its nature original. 
And then how seldom will the outward Capability fit the 
inward : though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, 
unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful ; nay, what is worse than all, 
we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, 
we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, and 
often clutch the wrong one : in this mad work must several 
years of our small term be spent, till the purblind Youth, by 
practice, acquire notions of distance, and become a seeing 
Man. Nay, many so spend their whole term, and in ever- 
new expectation, ever-new disappointment, shift from enter- 
prise to enterprise, and from side to side : till at length, as 
exasperated striplings of threescore-and-ten, they shift into 
their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 

" Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would be 
the general fate ; were it not that one thing saves us : our 
Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt nature of 
Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice be made : 
hence have we, with wise foresight. Indentures and Appren- 
ticeships for our irrational young; whereby, in due season, 



GETTliYG UNDER WAY. IO7 

the vague universality of a Man shall find himself ready^ 
moulded into a specific Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, 
with much or with little waste of Capability as it may be: 
yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in 
matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born blind, 
and does not, like certain other creatures, receive sight in 
nine days, but far later, sometimes never, — is it not well 
that there should be what we call Professions, or Bread - 
studies {Brodzwecke\ pre-appointed us ? Here, circHng like 
the gin-horse, for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, 
the Bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, still 
fancying that it is forward and forward ; and realize much : 
for himself victual; for the world an additional horse's 
power in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic 
Society. For me too had such a leading-string been provided; 
only that it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, 
till I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, 
did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, by 
strength or cunning, was to open, as I w^ould and could. 
Almost had I deceased {fast wdi- ich Mwgeko7n7ne7i\ so 
obstinately did it continue shut.'' 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of 
much that was to befall our Autobiographer : the historical 
embodiment of which, as it painfully takes shape in his Life, 
lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, through this Bag 
Pisces^ and those that follow. A young man of high talent, 
and high though still temper, like a young mettled colt, 
*' breaks-off his neck-halter,'' and bounds forth, from his 
peculiar manger, into the wide world ; which, alas, he finds 
all rigorously fenced-in. Richest clover-fields tempt his 
eye; but to him they are forbidden }:)asture : either pining in 
progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in mad exaspera- 
tion, must rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, 



I08 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

which he cannot leap over," which only lacerate and lame 
him ; till at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, 
he, as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into 
luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky 
wilderness where existence is still possible, and Freedom, 
though waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweetness. In 
a word, Teufelsdrockh, having thrown up his legal Profession, 
finds himself without landmark of outward guidance ; whereby 
his previous want of decided Belief, or inward guidance, is 
frightfully aggravated. Necessity urges him on; Time will 
not stop, neither can he, a Son of Time; wild passions 
without solacement, wild faculties without employment, ever 
vex and agitate him. He too must enact that stern Mono- 
drama, A'o Object and 710 Rest ; must front its successive 
destinies, work through to its catastrophe, and deduce 
therefrom what moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his *' neck- 
halter'' sat nowise easy on him; that he wms in some degree 
forced to break it off. If we look at the young man's civic 
position, in this Nameless capital, as he emerges from its 
Nameless University, we can discern well that it was far 
from enviable. His first Law-Examination he has come 
through triumphantly; and can even boast that the Exaiuen 
Rigoi'osujn need not have frightened him: but though he is 
hereby " an Ausciiltator of respectability,'' what avails it.-^ 
There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a 
youth without connections, is the process of Expectation 
very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition, much 
cheered from without. *^ My fellow Auscultators," he says. 
*' were Auscultators : they dressed, and digested, and talked 
articulate w^ords; other vitality showed they almost none. 
Small speculation in those eyes, that they did glare withal ! 
Sense neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for aught 



GETTIXa UNDER WAY, lOg 

human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of coming 
Preferment." In which words, indicating a total estrange 
ment on the part of Teufelsdrockh, may there not also lurk 
traces of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless 
these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with his 
strange ways; and tried to hate, and what was much more 
impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, in any 
case, there could not be : already has the young Teufels 
drockh left the other young geese , and swims apart, though 
as yet uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. 

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had w^as performed 
ill, at best unpleasantly. '^ Great practical method and 
expertness " he may brag of, but is there not also great 
practical pride, though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated ? 
So shy a man can never have been popular. We figure to 
ourselves, how in those days he may have played strange 
freaks with his independence, and so forth ; do not his own 
words betoken as much? *• Like a very young person, I 
imagined it was with Work alone, and not also with Folly 
and Sin, in myself and others, that I had been appointed to 
struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the passive 
Auscultatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evi- 
dently of the slowest. By degrees, those same established 
men, once partially inclined to patronize him, seem to with- 
draw their countenance, and give him up as '' a man of 
genius : " against which procedure he, in these Papers, loudly 
protests. "As if, ' says he, "the higher did not presuppose 
the lower ; as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also 
walk post if he resolved on it ! But the world is an old 
woman, and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin ; 
whereby being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust 
nothing but the common copper." 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a terrestrial 



no SARTOR RESARTUS. 

runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep himself from 
flying skyward without return, is not too clear from these 
Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have vanished 
from the scene, perhaps from the Earth ; other Horn of 
Plenty, or even of Parsimony, nowhere flows for him; so 
that *' the prompt nature of Hunger being well known," we 
are not without our anxiety. From private Tuition, in never 
so many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is small; 
neither, to use his own words, " does the young Adventurer 
hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; but at best 
earns bread-and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Trans- 
lation. Nevertheless," continues he, ''that I subsisted is 
clear, for you find me even now alive." Which fact, however, 
except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind old 
Proverb, that '* there is always life for a living one," we 
must profess ourselves unable to explain. 

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Documents, 
bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he was not 
without money; but, like an independent Hearth-holder, if 
not House-holder, paid his way. Here also occur, among 
many others, two little mutilated Notes, which perhaps 
throw light on his condition. The first has now no date, or 
writer's name, but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 
'' The (Inkblot), tied-down by previous promise, cannot, 
except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufelsdrockh's 
views on the Assessorship in question; and sees himself 
under the cruel necessity of forbearing, fpr the present, 
what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist in opening 
the career for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs 
are yet waiting." The other is on gilt paper; and interests 
us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which 
once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the 
original: '''Herr Teufelsdrockh wird %'on der Fran Grafinn, 




"THE INVITATION lO A WASH OF Oil IK FLUIO .liSTHEIlC TEA V'—Paoe m. 



GETTIXG CXJ^KK WAY. Ill 

aitf Donncrstag^ ziun ^-Esthetisciien Thee scJionstcns 
eingeladcnP 

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof there 
is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically enough, 
the invitation to a wash of quite fluid j^EstJietic Tea! How 
Teufelsdrockh, now at actual handgrips with Destiny herself, 
may have comported himself among these Musical and 
Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited 
to a feast of chickenwced, we can only conjecture. Perhaps 
in expressive silence, and abstinence : otherwise if the lion, 
in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on the chicken- 
weed, but only on the chickens. For the rest, as this Frau 
Ciraflnn dates from the Zdhdarjn House, she can be no 
other than the Countess and mistress of the same ; whose 
intellectual tendencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, 
whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own 
tooting, are hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, 
indeed, continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, 
though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, we 
have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he expected 
patronage, it was in vain ; enough for him if he here 
obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, from which 
we at one time fancied him to have been always excluded. 
*' The Zahdarms," says he, "lived in the soft, sumptuous 
garniture of Aristocracy; whereto Literature and Art; 
attracted and attached from without, were to serve as the 
handsomest fringing. It was to the Gnddigen Frau (her 
Ladyship) that this latter improvement was due : assiduously 
she gathered, dextrously she fitted-on, what fringing was 
to be had ; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." Was 
Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb; or promising 
to be such ? " With his Excellenz (the Count)," continues 
he, "I have more than once had the honor to converse j 



112 . SARTOR RESARTUS. 

chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, which 
he, though now past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable 
light ; finding indeed, except the Outrooting of Journalism 
{ciie attszurottende Journalistik)^ little to desiderate therein. 
On some points, as his Excellenz was not uncholeric, I 
found it more pleasant to keep silence. Besides, his 
occupation being that of Owning Land, there might be 
faculties enough, which, as superfluous for such use, were 
little developed in him." 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was nowise 
so faultless, and many things besides " the Outrooting of 
Journahsm " might have seemed improvements, we can 
readily conjecture. With nothing but a barren Auscultator- 
ship from without, and so many mutinous thoughts and 
wishes from within, his position was no easy one. ^' The 
Universe," he says, ^' was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which 
I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red 
streaks of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness 
of darkness, was Life, to my too-unfurnished Thought, 
unfolding itselL(^ A strange contradiction lay in me; and 
I as yet knew not the solution of it ; knew not that spiritual 
music can spring only from discords set in harmony ; that 
but for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only possible 
by battle.'O 

" I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he else- 
where, " by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were a real 
increase of human happiness, could all youqg men from the 
age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered other- 
wise invisible ; and there left to follow their lawful studies 
and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age 
of twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least as considered 
in the light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that 
I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that^ 



GETTIXG UNDER WAY. II3 

as young ladies (Mddc/ien) arc, to mankind, precisely the 
most delightful in those years ; so young gentlemen {Bilbclieii) 
do then attain their maximum of detestability. Such gawks 
{Geckoi) are they, and foolish peacocks, and yet with 
such a vulturous hunger for self-indulgence ; so obstinate, 
obstreperous, vain-glorious ; in all senses, so froward and 
so forward. No mortal's endeavor or attainment will, in the 
smallest, content the as yet unendeavoring, unattaining 
young gentleman ; but he could make it all infinitely better, 
were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most man- 
ageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule-of-Three : 
multiply your second and third term together, divide the 
product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer, — 
which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby 
has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, 
there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, 
and no net integer quotient so much as to be thought of." 

In which passage does not there lie an implied confession 
that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward obstructions, 
had an inward, still greater, to contend with; namely, a 
certain temporary, youthful, yet still affiictive derangement 
of head ? Alas, on the former side alone, his case was hard 
enough. "It continues ever true," says he, ^' that Saturn, 
or Chronos, or what we call Time, devours all his Children : 
only by incessant Running, by incessant Working, may you 
(for some threescore-and-ten years) escape him ; and you 
too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance 
of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still ; even in thought, shake 
themselves free of Time ? Our whole terrestrial being is 
based on Time, and built of Time ; it is wholly a Movement, 
a Time-impulse ; Time is the author of it, the material of it. 
Hence also our Whole Duty, which is to move, to work, — 
in the ricfht direction. Are not our Bod^'es and our Souls in 



114 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

continual movement, whether we will or not ; in a continual 
Waste, requiring a continual Repair? Utmost satisfaction 
of our whole outward and inward Wants were but satisfac- 
tion for a space of Time; thus, whatso we have done, is 
done, and for us annihilated, and ever must we go and do 
anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast thou environed and impris- 
oned us, and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time- 
Element, that only in lucid moments can so much as 
glimpses of our upper Azure Home be revealed to us ! Me, 
however, as a Son of Time, unhappier than some others, 
was Time threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, strive 
as I might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was 
the path, so gyved were the feet." That is to say, we 
presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that 
Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like other 
men's, '' to work, — in the right direction," and that no work 
was to be had ; whereby he became wretched enough. As 
was natural : with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the 
distance ; and so vehement a soul languishing in restless 
inaction, and forced thereby, like Sir Hudibras' sword by 
rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack ! 

But on the whole, that same " excellent Passivity," as it 
has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing ; in 
which circumstance may we not trace the beginnings of 
much that now characterizes our Professor; and perhaps, 
in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes- Philosophy 
itself ? Already the attitude he has assumed towards the 
World is too defensive ; not, as would have been desirable, 
a bold attitude of attack. " So far hitherto," he says, *' as 
I had mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for ^ny thing. 



GETTING UNDER WAY. II5 

for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends often 
rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen ardor of 
my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with an excess both 
of love and of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is 
ever divine to him that has a sense for the Godlike. Often, 
notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, 
for my so-called Hardness (Hdrie\ my Indifferentism 
towards men ; and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, 
as my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply 
of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, wherein I had 
striven to envelop myself ; that so my own poor Person 
might live safe there, and in all friendliness, being no 
longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, 
in general, the language of the Devil ; for which reason I 
have long since as good as renounced it. But how many 
individuals did I, in those- days, provoke into some degree 
of hostility thereby ! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, 
and ambuscading ways, more especially an ironic young 
man, from whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a 
pest to society. Have we not seen persons of weight and 
name coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread 
such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, 
start ceiling-high {balkeiihoch\ and thence fall shattered 
and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without 
indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo I " 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper 
make way for himself in Life ; where the first problem, 
as Teufelsdrockh too admits, is '' to unite vourself with 
some one and with somewhat {sich anzuschliessen) " ? 
Division, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. 
Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only 
important connection he had ever succeeded in forming, !iis 
connection with the ^ahdarm Family, seems to have been 



Il6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

paralyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of the *^ not 
uncholeric " old Count. This fact stands recorded, quite 
incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs^ huddled 
into the present Bag, among so much else ; of which Essay 
the learning and curious penetration are more to be approved 
of than the spirit. His grand principle is, that lapidary 
inscriptions, of what sort soever, should be Historical rather 
than Lyrical. " By request of that worthy Nobleman's 
survivors," says he, ^' I undertook to compose his Epitaph ; 
and not unmindful of my own rules, produced the following ; 
which however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect 
never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven ; " 
— wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity 
that will surprise an English reader : 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

ZAEHDARMI COMES, 

EX EMPERII CONCILIO, 

VELLERI5 AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS NIGRI 

EQUES. 

QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 

PLUM BO confecit: 
VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, 

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTIT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 
OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM QU^ERIS, 
FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PKIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT \s7lb dato\ ', POSTREMUM \^SZtb dato\ 



ROMANCE. I 1 7 

CHAPTER V. 

ROMANCE. 

FOR long 3Tars/' writes Teufelsdrockb, "had the poor 
Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully 
toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the ques- 
tion once struck him witli entire force: For what? — Beyvi 
Hnninel ! For Food and Warmth ! And are Food and 
Warmth nowhere else, in the whole wide Universe, discover- 
able ? — Come of it what might, I resolved to try/' 

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent 
capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. 
Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession. Quitting 
the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where 
indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful enough, 
he desperately steers off, on a course of his own, by sextant 
and compass of his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh ! Though 
neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Commodores please thee, 
still was it not a Fleets sailing in prescribed track, for fixed 
objects; alcove all, in combination, wherein, by mutual 
guidance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each 
could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail in 
unknown seas ; and for thyself find that shorter North-west 
Passage to thy fair Spice-country of a Nowhere? — A 
solitary rover, on such a voyage, with sucli nautical tactics, 
will meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, 
a certain Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset; and 
as it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 

*' If in youth," writes he once, " the Universe is majestic- 
ally unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing itself on 



Il8 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this Heaven on 
Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the Young Maiden. 
Strangely enough, in this strange life of ours, it has been so 
appointed. On the whole, as I have often said, a Person 
[Personlichkeit) is ever holy to us ; a certain orthodox 
Anthropomorphism connects my Me with all Thees in bonds 
of Love : but it is in this approximation of the Like and 
Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative 
and Positive, first burns-out into a flame. Is the pitifullest 
mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us 1 Is it not rather 
our heartfelt wish to be made one with him ; to unite him to 
us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or failing all 
these, unite ourselves to him 1 But how much more, in this 
case of the Like-Unlike ! Here is conceded us the higher 
mystic possibility of such a union, the highest in our Earth ; 
thus, in the conducting medium of Fantasy, flames-forth that 
yfr^-development of the universal Spiritual Electricity, which, 
as unfolded between man and woman, we first emphatically 
denominate Love. 

" In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, there 
already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, cheered by 
some fairest Eve ; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage 
and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowledge, beauti- 
ful and awful in the midst thereof, wanting. Perhaps too 
the whole is but the lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming 
Sword divide it from all footsteps of men; and grant him, 
the imaginative stripling, only the view, not the entrance. 
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still an 
impassable celestial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope 
have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality; and 
man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free ! 

*' As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufelsdrockh, 
evidently meaning himself, ^' in his secluded way of life, and 



ROMANCE. 119 

with liis flowing Fantasy, the more fiery tliat it burnt under 
cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feeling towards the 
Queens of this Earth was, and indeed is, altogether unspeak- 
able. A visible Divinity dwelt in them ; to our young Friend 
all women were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw 
them flitting past, in their many-colored angel-plumage; or 
hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of ^^sthetic 
Tea : all of air they were, all Soul and Form ; so lovely, 
like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the invisible 
Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into very Heaven. 
That he, our poor Friend, should ever win for himself one 
of these Gracefuls {Holdoi) — Ach Gott ! how could he hope 
it ; should he not have died under it t There was a certain 
delirious vertig;o in the thouo^ht. 

" Thus was the young man, if all-sceptical of Demons and 
Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, nevertheless 
not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, who visibly and 
audibly hovered round him wheresoever he went; and they 
had that religious worship in his thought, though as yet it 
was by their mere earthly and trivial name that he named 
them. But now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual 
Air-maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, should 
cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, " Thou 
too mayest love and be loved;" and so kindle him, — good 
Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all-consuming, 
fire were probably kindled ! 

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst forth, 
with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the inner man of 
Herr Diogenes ; as indeed how could it fail ? A nature, 
which, in his own figurative style, we might say, had now 
not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritability; with so much 
nitre of latent Passion, and sulphurous Humor enough ; the 
whole lying in such hot neighborhood, close by "a rever- 



I20 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

berating furnace of Fantasy: " have we not here the com- 
ponents of driest Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the 
smallest spark, to blaze-up? Neither, in this our Life- 
element, are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some 
Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would one day, leaving 
" the outskirts of Esthetic Tea,'' flit nigher ; and, by electric 
Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, 
if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed-off rocket-wise 
in successive beautiful bursts of splendor, each growing 
naturally from the other, through the several stages of a 
happy Youthful Love ; till the whole were safely burnt-out ; 
and the young soul relieved with little damage ! Happy, if 
it did not rather prove a Conflagration and mad Explosion ; 
painfully lacerating the heart itself ; nay perhaps bursting 
the heart in pieces (which were Death) ; or at best, burst- 
ing the thin walls of your "reverberating furnace," so that it 
rage thenceforth all unchecked among the contiguous com- 
bustibles (which were Madness) : till of the so fair and 
manifold internal world of our Diogenes, there remained 
Nothing, or only the "crater of an extinct volcano!" 

From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capricornus, 
and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, it becomes 
manifest that our philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he 
now looks, was heartily and even frantically in Love : here 
therefore may our old doubts whether his heart were of 
stone or of flesh give way. He loved once ; not wisely but 
too well. And once only : for as your Congreve needs a 
new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so each human 
heart can properly exhibit but one Love, if even one ; the 
"First Love which is infinite" can be followed by no second 
like unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, the Editor 
of these Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man 
not only who would never wed, but who would never even 



jROMA.VCE, 12 T 

flirt ; wliom the grancl-climacieric itself, and St. Martin's 
Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new 
myrtle-garland. To the Professor, women are henceforth 
Pieces of Art ; of Celestial Art, indeed ; which celestial 
pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought 
of purchasing. 

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to see 
how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him unexampled predicament, 
demeans himself; with what specialties of successive con- 
figuration, splendor and color, his Firework blazes-off. 
Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such can meet with 
here. From amid these confused masses of Eulogy and 
Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying 
madly scattered among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, 
not so much as the fair one's name can be deciphered.^ 
For, without doubt, the title Blumine^ wiiereby she is here 
designated, and which means simply Goddess of Flowers, 
must be fictitious. Was her real name Flora, then ? But 
what was her surname, or had she none? Of what station 
in Life was she ; of what parentage, fortune, aspect ? Spe- 
cially, by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did 
the Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide 
a world; how did they behave in such meeting? To all 
which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, mere 
Conjecture must for most part return answer. ''It was 
appointed," says our Philosopher, "that the high celestial 
orbit of Blumine should intersect the low sublunary one of 
our Forlorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean eyes, should 
fancy the upper Sphere of Light was come down into this 
nether Sphere of ^Shadows ; and finding himself mistaken, 
make noise enough." 

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyad, beau- 
tiful, and some one's Cousin; highborn, and of high spirit; 



122 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

but unhappily dependent and insolvent ; living, perhaps, on 
the not too gracious bounty of moneyed relatives. But how 
came " the Wanderer " into her circle ? Was it by the humid 
vehicle of JEsthetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Busi- 
ness ? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood ; or of the 
Gnadige Frau, who, as an ornamental Artist, might some- 
times like to promote flirtation, especially for young cynical 
Nondescripts ? To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, 
and the grace of Nature. 

"Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiographer, 
"what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved 
Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last Relatio 
ex Actis he w^ould ever write, but must have paused to 
wonder ! Noble Mansion ! There stoodest thou, in deep 
Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous lawns, in thy serene 
solitude ; stately, massive, all of granite ; glittering in the 
western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid 
with precious metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, 
the slope of thy guardian Hills ; of the greenest was their 
sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or 
spotted by some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. 
To the unconscious Wayfarer thou w^ert also as an Ammon's 
Temple, in the Libyan W^aste ; where, for joy and woe, the 
tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he pause and 
gaze ; in that glance of his were prophecy and nameless 
forebodings." . 

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient Auscul- 
tator has handed-in his Relatio ex Actisj been invited to a 
glass of Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of returning dispirited 
and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is ushered into the 
Gardenhouse, where sit the choicest party of dames and 
cavaliers : if not engaged in Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful 
evening conversation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we 




*'l'-I.LMINE, IUKKK IN HKK MODES! V, I.ikk a stAK 
KAKTHI.Y I.ICMTS."— yVf.4V 123. 



KOMAXCE, 123 

hear of *^ harps and pure voices making the slilhicss hve."' 
Scarcely, it would seem, is the Gardenhouse interior in 
respectability to the noble Mansion itself. *' Embowered 
amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors of 
thousand flowers, here sat that brave company ; in front, 
from the wide-opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and 
bush, over grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating 
onwards to the remote Mountain peaks : so bright, so mild, 
and everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures : it 
was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the 
bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came it that the 
Wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting heart 
[ahndiingsvoll\ by the side of his gay host.'^ Did he feel 
that to these soft influences his hard bosom ought to be 
shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in view to try him; 
to mock him, and see whether there were Humor in him ? 

"Next moment he finds himself presented to the party; 
and especially by name to — Blumine ! Peculiar among all 
dames and damosels glanced Blumine, there in her modesty, 
like a star among earthly lights. Noblest maiden ! whom 
he bent to, in body and in soul ; yet scarcely dared look at, 
for the presence filled him with painful yet sweetest embar- 
rassment. 

^' Blumine's was a name well known to him ; far and wide 
was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, her 
caprices : from all which vague colorings of Rumor, from 
the censures no less than from the praises, had our friend 
painted for himself a certain imperious Queen of Hearts, 
and blooming warm Earth-angel, much more enchanting 
than your mere white Heaven-angels of women, in whose 
placid veins circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also 
he had seen in public places ; that light yet so stately form ; 
those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunlight 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

played over earnest deeps : but all this he had seen only as 
a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost without reality. 
Her sphere was too far from his ; how should she ever think 
of him; O Heaven ! how should they so much as once meet 
together? And now that Rose-goddess sits in the same 
circle with him ; the light of her eyes has smiled on him ; 
if he speak, she will hear it ! Nay, who knows, since the 
heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself 
might have aforetime noted the so unnotable ; perhaps, from 
his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gathered wonder, 
gathered favor for him? Was the attraction, the agitation 
mutual, then ; pole and pole trembling towards contact, 
when once brought into neighborhood? Say rather, heart 
swelling in presence of the Queen of Hearts ; like the Sea 
swelling when once near its Moon ! With the Wanderer it 
was even so : as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly as at 
the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused from 
its deepest recesses ; and all that was painful and that was 
blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a whole Past 
and a whole Future, are heaving in unquiet eddies within 
him. 

^' Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still Friend 
shrunk forcibly together; and shrouded-up his tremors and 
flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, 
and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was it, then, that 
here, when trembling to the core of his heart, he did not 
sink into swoons, but rose into strength, into fearlessness 
and clearness ? It was his guiding Genius (Ddmoii) that 
inspired him ; he must go forth and meet his Destiny. 
Show thyself now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus 
sometimes it is even when your anxiety becomes transcen- 
dental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it ; 
that she rises above it, in fiery victory ; and borne on new- 



ROMANCE, 125 

found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even because 
so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer 
remember, with a certain satisfaction and surprise, how 
in this case he sat not silent, but struck adroitly into the 
stream of conversation ; which thenceforth, to speak with an 
apparent not a real vanity, he may say that he continued 
to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain inspiration was 
imparted him, such inspiration as is still possible in our late 
era. The self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, 
in free, glowing words ; his soul is as one sea of light, the 
peculiar home of Truth and Intellect; whereifi^lso Fantasy 
bodies-forth form after form, radiant with all prismatic hues.'* 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there talked 
one ^-Philistine;" who even now, to the general weariness, 
was dominantly pouring-forth Philistinism (Philistriositdteii)\ 
little witting what hero was here entering to demolish him: 
We omit the series of Socratic, or rather Biogenic utterances, 
not unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, ^' persuaded 
into silence," seems soon after to have withdrawn for the 
night. " Of which dialectic marauder," writes our hero, 
" the discomfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most \ 
but what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening 
every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself 
repaid the victor? He ventured to address her, she answered 
wMth attention : nay what if there were a slight tremor in that 
silver voice ; what if the red glow of evening were hiding a 
transient blush ! 

•'The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought 
called forth another: it was one of those rare seasons, w^hen 
the soul expands with full freedom, and man feels himself 
brought near to man. Gayly in light, graceful abandonment, 
the friendly talk played round that circle ; for the burden 
was rolled from every heart ; the barriers of Ceremony, 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

which are indeed the laws of polite living, had melted as 
into vapor ; and the poor claims of Me and Thee^ no longer 
parted by rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another ; 
and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, hke some fair 
royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which were 
Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, in a kind 
environment of place and time. And yet as the light grew 
more aerial on the mountain-tops, and the shadows fell 
longer over the valley, some faint tone of sadness may have 
breathed through the heart ; and, in whispers more or less 
audible, reminded every one that as this bright day was 
drawing towards its close, so likewise must the Day of 
Man's Existence decline into dust and darkness ; and with 
all its sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in 
the still Eternity. 

" To our Friend the hours seemed moments ; holy was he 
and happy; the words from those sweetest lips came over 
him like dew on thirsty grass ; all better feelings in his soul 
seemed to whisper, It is good for us to be here. At parting, 
the Blumine's hand was in his : in the balmy twilight, with 
the kind stars above them, he spoke something of meeting 
again, which was not contradicted ; he pressed gently those 
small soft fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, 
not angrily withdrawn." 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration thou art 
smit : the Queen of Hearts would see a "man of genius" 
also sigh for her; and there, by art-magic, in that preternat- 
ural hour, has she bound and spell-bound thee. " Love is 
not altogether a Delirium," says he elsewhere ; *' yet has 
it many points in common therewith. I call it rather a 
discerning of the Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made 
Real ; which discerning again may be either true or false, 
either seraphic pr demoniac, Inspiration or Insanity. But 



KOMA.VCE. 127 

in the former case too, as in common Madness, it is Fantasy 
that superadds itself to sight ; on the so petty domain of tlie 
Actual plants its Arcliimedes-lever, whereby to move at will 
the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might call the true Heaven, 
gate and Hell-gate of man : his sensuous life is but the 
small temj^orary stage {ZeitbiiJuic\ whereon thick-streaming 
influences from both these far yet near regions meet visibly, 
and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support herself 
handsomely, in most countries, for some eighteen-pence a 
day ; but for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will not 
suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet 
drinking no better red wine than he had before." Alas ! 
witness also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the upper 
Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for prize of a " high- 
souled Brunette," as if the earth held but one and not several 
of these ! 

He says that, in Town, they met again : ^' day after day, 
like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone on him. 
Ah ! a little while ago, and he was yet in all darkness : 
him what Graceful (^Holde) would ever love ? Disbelieving 
all things, the poor youth had never learned to believe in 
himself. Withdrawn, in proud timidity, within his own 
fastnesses ; solitary from men, yet baited by night-spectres 
enough, he saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained 
to renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And now, O 
now! 'She looks on thee,' cried he: 'she the fairest, 
noblest; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not 
despised.'* The Heaven's - Messenger ! All Heaven's 
blessings be hers ! ' Thus did soft melodies flow through 
his heart; tones of an infinite gratitude; sweetest intima- 
tions that he also was a man, tliat for him also unutterable 
joys had been provided. 

"In free speech, earnest or gay, amid larpbqnt <^lances^ 



128 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic speech 
of Music : such was the element they now lived in ; in such 
a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fairest of Orient 
Light-bringers must our Friend be blandished, and the new 
Apocalypse of Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine ! 
And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Softness, a very 
Light-ray incarnate ! Was there so much as a fault, a 
'caprice,' he could have dispensed with ? Was she not to 
him in very deed a Morning-Star ; did not her presence 
bring with it airs from Heaven ? As from ^olian Harps 
in the breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck 
by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was around 
him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt 
fled away to the distance ; Life bloomed-up with happiness 
and hope. The past, then, was all a haggard dream ; he 
had been in the Garden of Eden, then, and could not 
discern it ! But lo now ! the black w^alls of his prison melt 
away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved his Disen- 
chantress? Ach Gott ! His whole heart and soul and life 
were hers, but never had he named it Love : existence was 
all a Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought." 

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it must 
be shaped; for neither Disenchanter nor Disenchantress, 
mere " Children of Time," can abide by Feeling alone. 
The Professor knows not, to this day, " how in her soft, 
fervid bosom the Lovely found determination, even on 
hest of Necessity, to cut-asunder these so blissful bonds." 
He even appears surprised at the " Duenna Cousin," who- 
ever she may have been, *'in whose meagre, hunger-bitten 
philosophy, the religion of young hearts was, from the first, 
faintly approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain 
it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this 
one question : What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. 



KOMAATE, 129 

Teufclsdmckh likely to make in polished society ? Could 
she have driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even a 
simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish *' absolved Auscul- 
tatory* before whom lies no prospect of capital, will any yet 
known *' religion of young hearts " keep the human kitchen 
warm? Pshaw! thy divine IHumine, when she '* resigned 
herself to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, though 
but ''a woman of genius," than thou, a pretended man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love-mania, 
and with what royal splendor it waxes, and rises. Let no 
one ask us to unfold the glories of its dominant state; much 
less the horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. 
How from such inorganic masses, henceforth madder than 
ever, as lie in these Bags, can even fragments of a living 
delineation be organized? Besides, of what profit were it? 
We view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier 
start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the 
liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star : but what 
is there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, 
or accident of fire, it has exploded ? A hapless air-navigator, 
plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, and confused 
wreck, fast enough into the jaws of the Devil ! Suffice it 
to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the hif^hest regfions 
of the Empyrean, by a natural parabolic track, and returned 
thence in a quick jDcrpendicular one. For the rest, let any 
feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough to do the like, 
paint it out for himself: considering only that if he, for 
his perhaps comparatively insignificant mistress, underwent 
such agonies and frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh's have 
been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine ! We 
glance merely at the final scene : 

"One morning, he found his Morning-star all dimmed and 
dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent, absent, she seemed 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but 
a troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the Doomsday 
had dawned ! She said, in a tremulous voice, They were to 
meet no more.*' The thunderstruck Air-sailor is not wanting 
to himself in this dread hour : but what avails it? We omit 
the passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since 
all was vain, and not even an explanation was conceded him ; 
and hasten to the catastrophe. " ' Farewell, then. Madam ! ' 
said he, not without sternness, for his stung pride helped 
him. She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears 
started to her eyes ; in wild audacity he clasped her to his 
bosom; their lips were joined, their two souls, like two 
dew-drops, rushed into one, — for the first time, and for 
the last ! '* Thus w^as Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a 
kiss. And then? Why, then — "thick curtains of Night 
rushed over his soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of 
Doom; and through the ruins as of a shivered Universe 
was he falling, falling, towards the Abyss." 



CHAPTER VI. 

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 

WE have long felt that, with a man Hke our Professor, 
matters must often be expected to take a course of 
their own; that in so multiplex, intricate^ a nature, there 
might be channels, both for admitting and emitting, such 
as the Psychologist had seldom noted ; in short, that on no 
grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the joy-storm nor 
in the woe-storm, could you predict his demeanor. 

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is now 
cle^r tbat the so passionate Teufelsdrockh,^ precipitated 



SOKROIVS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 131 

through "a shivered Universe '' in this extraordinary way, 
has only one of three things which he can next do: Establish 
himself in Bedlam ; begin writing Satanic Poetry ; or blow- 
out his brains. In the progress towards any of which 
consummations, do not such readers anticipate extravagance 
enough ; breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion- 
bellowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, 
breakages of furniture, if not arson itself ? 

Nowise so does Teufeli^drockh deport him. He quietly 
lifts his Pilocrs/iil? (Pilgram-staff), "old business being soon 
wound-up;" and begins a perambulation and circumambula- 
tion of the terraqueous Globe ! Curious it is, indeed, how 
with such vivacity of conception, such intensity of feeling, 
above all, with these unconscionable habits of Exaggeration 
in speech, lie combines that wonderful stillness of his, that 
stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden bereave- 
ment, in this matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as 
a real Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light 
doubtless it parti) appeared to himself, his own nature is 
nowise dissolved thereby; but rather is compressed closer. 
For once, as we might say, a Blumine by magic appliances 
has -unlocked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things 
rush-out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised from 
their glass phial : but no sooner are your magic appliances 
withdrawn, than the strange casket of a heart springs-to 
again; and perhaps there is now no key extant that will open 
it ; for a Teufelsdrockh, as we remarked, will not love a 
second time. Singular Diogenes ! No sooner has that 
heart-rending occurrence fairly taken place, than he affects 
to regard it as a thing natural, of which there is nothing 
more to be said. " One highest hope, seemingly legible in 
the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as out of Death- 
shadows into celestial Life : but a gleam of Topliet passed 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

over the face of his Angel ; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, 
and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,'' 
adds he, "whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves 
in the waste Ocean-waters : a lying vision, yet not wholly 
a lie, for he saw it." But what things soever passed in 
him, when he ceased to see it; what ragings and despair- 
ings soever Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has 
the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque cover ot 
Silence. We know it well ; the first mad paroxysm past, 
our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered philosophies, 
and buttoned himself together; he was meek, silent, or 
spoke of the weather and the Journals : only by a transient 
knitting of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of those 
eyes, glancing one knew not wliether with tear-dew or with 
fierce fire, — might you have guessed what a Gehenna was 
within ; that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though 
inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as some 
chimneys consume their own smoke ; to keep a whole Satanic 
School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a negative 
yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest in these 
times. 

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that in the 
strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent 
Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these 
Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. 
His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without 
assigned or perhaps assignable aim ; internal Unrest seems 
his sole guidance ; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of 
the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were " made hke 
unto a wheel." Dolibtless, too, the chaotic nature of these 
Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note 
of preparation, for example, we come upon the following 
^lip ; " A peculiar feeling it is that will rise in the Traveller, 



so /a /coirs of TEUFELSDRocKir. 133 

when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he descries 
lying far below, embosomed among its groves and green 
natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the fair 
Town, where so many souls, as it were seen and yet unseen, 
are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is 
then truly a starward-pointing finger ; the canopy of blue 
smoke seems like a sort of Life-breath : for always, of its 
own unity, the soul gives unity to whatsoever it looks on 
with love ; thus does the little Dwellingplace of men, in 
itself a congeries of houses and huts, become for us an 
individual, almost a person. But what thousand other 
thoughts unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been 
the arena of joyous or mournful experiences ; if perhaps the 
cradle we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving 
ones still dwell there, if our Buried ones there slumber ! " 
Does Teufelsdrockh, as the wounded eagle is said to make 
for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all 
hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the direc- 
tion of their birthland, — fly first, in this extremity, towards 
his native Entepfuhl ; but reflecting that there no help 
awaits him, take only one wistful look from the distance, 
and then wend elsewhither '^. 

Little happier seems to be his next flight : into the wilds 
of Nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would seek healing. 
So at least we incline to interpret the following Notice, 
separated from the former by some considerable space, 
wherein, however, is nothing noteworthy: 

" Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are Moun- 
tains seen in such combined majesty and grace as here. 
The rocks are of that sort called Primitive by the mineralo- 
gists, which always arrange themselves in masses of a 
rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, however, is 
here tempered by a singular airiness of form, and softness 



134 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

of environment: in a climate favorable to vegetation, the 
gray cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up through a 
garment of foliage or verdure ; and white, bright cottages, 
tree-shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. In fine 
vicissitude, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: you ride 
through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by 
torrents, overhung by high w?Jls of rock ; now winding amid 
broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments ; now suddenly 
emerging into some emerald valley, where the streamlet 
collects itself into a Lake, and man has again found a fair 
dwelling, and it seems as if Peace had estabhshed herself in 
the bosom of Strength. 

^' To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can the 
Son of Time not pretend : still less if some Spectre haunt 
him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a Stygian 
Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might the Wanderer 
exclaim to himself: Are not the gates of this world's Happi- 
ness inexorably shut against thee; hast thou a hope that is 
not mad ? Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, or 
in the original Greek if that suit thee better : * Whoso can 
look on Death will start at no shadows.' 

" From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention 
called outwards; for now the Valley closes-in abruptly, 
intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water-worn 
ascent of which is not to be accomplished on horseback. 
Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted into the evening 
sunset light; and cannot but pause, and gaze round him, 
some moments there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, 
where valleys in complex branchings are suddenly or slowly 
arranging their descent towards every quarter of the sky. 
The mountain ranges are beneath your feet, and folded 
together : only the loftier summits look down here and 
there as on a second plain ; lakes also lie clear and earnest 




^i'^' 135- 



SOAVCOU'S OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 1 35 

in their solitude. No trace of man now visible ; unless 
indeed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of 
Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, to 
unite Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you ! how 
it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the diadem and 
centre of the mountain region ! A hundred and a hundred 
savage peaks, in the last light of Day ; all glowing, of gold 
and amethyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness ; there in 
their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night when 
Noah's Deluge first dried ! Beautiful, nay solemn, was the 
sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He gazed over those 
stupendous masses with wonder, almost with longing desire ; 
never till this hour had he known Nature, that she was One, 
that she was his Mother and divine. And as the ruddy 
glow was fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had 
now departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of 
Death and of Life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as 
if Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, 
as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splendor, 
and his own spirit were therewith holding communion. 

" The spell was broken by a sound of carriage-wheels. 
Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon into the 
hidden Southward, came a gay Barouche-and-four : it was 
open; servants and postillions wore wedding-favors: that 
happy pair, then, had found each other, it was their marriage 
evening: ! Few moments broug^ht them near : Die Himinel ! 
It was Herr Towgood and — Blumine ! With slight unrec- 
ognizing salutation they passed me ; plunged down amid the 
neighboring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to England; 
and I, in my friend Richter's words, / remained alone^ 
behind them, with the Night''' 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might be 
the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago from 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the great Clothes-Volume^ where it stands with quite other 
intent: "Some time before Small-pox was extirpated," says 
the Professor, *' there came a new malady of the spiritual 
sort on Europe : I mean the epidemic, now endemical, of 
View-hunting. Poets of old date, being privileged with 
Senses, had also enjoyed external Nature ; but chiefly as we 
enjoy the crystal cup which holds good or bad liquor for us : 
that is to say, in silence, or with slight incidental commen 
tary: never, as I compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, 
was there man found who would say : Come let us make a 
Description ! Having drunk the liquor, come let us eat 
the glass ! Of which endemic the Jenner is unhappily still 
to seek." Too true ! 

We reckon it more important to remark that the Professor's 
Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical envelopment 
admits us to clear insight, here first take their permanent 
character, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of the 
Barouche-and-four seems to have withered-up what little 
remnant of a purpose may have still lurked in him : Life has 
become wholly a dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long 
years, our Friend, flying from spectres, has to stumble about 
at random, and naturally with more haste than progress. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even from 
afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his ; the 
simplest record of which, were clear record possible, would 
fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeakable the 
confusion. He glides from country to country, from condi- 
tion to condition ; vanishing and re-appearing, no man can 
calculate how or where. Through all quarters of the world 
he wanders, and apparently through all circles of society. 
If in any scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he 
settles for a time, and forms connections, be sure he will 
snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight as 



SO/i'A'OJrS OF TEUFELSDROCk'n. l^ 

Private Scholar {P rk'atisire7ider\ living by the grace of 
God in some European capital, you may next find him as 
Hadjee in the neighboj-hood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable 
Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-changing; as if our Travel- 
ler, instead of limbs and highways, had transported himself 
by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The whole, 
too, imparted emblematically, in dim multifarious tokens (as 
that collection of Street Advertisements); with only some 
touch of direct historical notice sparingly interspersed: 
little light-islets in the world of haze ! So that, from this 
point, the Professor is more of an enigma than ever. In 
figurative language, we might say he becomes, not indeed a 
spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. Fact unparalleled in 
Biography: The river of his History, which we have traced 
from its tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, 
with increasing current, into the ocean, here dashes itself 
over that terrific Lover's Leap; and, as a mad-foaming 
cataract, flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! Low 
down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet 
only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a 
general stream. To cast a glance into certain of those pools 
and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for a chapter 
or two, form the limit of our endeavor. 

For which end doubtless those direct historical Notices, 
where they can be met with, are the best. Nevertheless, of 
this sort too there occurs much, which, with our present 
light, it were questionable to emit. Teufelsdrockh, vibrating 
everywhere between the highest and the lowest levels, comes 
into contact with public History itself. For example, those 
conversations and relations with illustrious Persons, as 
Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are 
they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character than of a 
biographic? The Editor, aj^preciating the sacredness of 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

crowned heads, nay perhaps suspecting tlie possible trick- 
eries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province 
for the present ; a new time may bring new insight and a 
different duty. 

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, for 
there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks; at all 
events, in what mood of mind, the Professor undertook and 
prosecuted this world pilgrimage, — the answer is more 
distinct than favorable. *' A nameless Unrest," says he, 
" urged me forward ; to which the outward motion was 
some momentary lying solace. Whither should I go ? My 
Loadstars were blotted out ; in that canopy of grim fire 
shone no star. Yet forward must I ; the ground burnt under 
me; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. I was alone, 
alone ! Ever too the strong inward longing shaped Fantasms 
for itself: toward these, one after the other, must 1 fruit- 
lessly wander. A feeling I had, that for my fever-thirst 
there was and must be somewhere a healing Fountain. To 
many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' Wells of these 
days, did I pilgrim; to great Men, to great Cities, to great 
Events : but found there no heahng. In strange countries, 
as in the well-known ; in savage deserts, as in the press of 
corrupt civilization, it was ever the same : how could your 
Wanderer escape from — his own Shadow ? Nevertheless 
still Forward ! I felt as if in great haste ; to do I saw not 
what. From the depths of my own heart, it called to me. 
Forwards ! The winds and the streams, and all Nature 
sounded to me, Forwards! Ach Gott^ I was even, once for 
all, a Son of Time.'' 

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic 
School was still active enough ? He says elsewhere : "The 
Enchiridion of Epictetus I had ever with me, often as 
my sole rational companion; and regret to mention that 






-^ 












/C' 



^.^ 






'a NA.MRI.KSS INRKSr I'k(.KI) MK I ( )K\\ A K I )." — /^s^ ^38. 



SORROIVS OF TEUFELSDROCKir. 1 39 

the nourishment it yielded was trifling/' Thou foohsli 
Teufelsdrockh ! How could it else ?^ Hadst thou not Greek 
enough to understand thus much : yThe end of Man is mi 
Action, and not a Thought^ though it were the noblest .y 

"How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, hast thou 
considered the 'rugged all-nourishing Earth,' as Sophocles 
well names her; how she feeds the sparrow on the house- 
top, much more her darling, man ? While thou stirrest and 
livest, thou hast a probability of victual. My breakfast of 
tea has been cooked by a Tartar woman, with water of the 
Amur, who wiped her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I 
have roasted wild-efrofs in the sand of Sahara ; I have 
awakened in Paris Estrapades and Vienna Malzleins^ with 
no prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. That I 
had my Living to seek saved me from Dying, — by suicide. 
In our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand for 
Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, religious, 
educational, commercial departments? In Pagan countries, 
cannot one write Fetishes ? Living ! Little knowest thou 
what alchemy is in an inventive wSoul ; how, as with its little 
finger, it can create provision enough for the body (of a 
Philosopher); and then, as with both hands, create quite 
other than provision ; namely, spectres to torment itself 
withal." 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger always parallel 
to him : and a whole Infernal Chase in his rear; so that the 
countenance of Hunger is comparatively a friend's ! Thus 
must he, in the temper of ancient Cain, or of the modern 
Wandering Jew, — save only that he feels himself not guilty 
and but suffering the pains of guilt, — wend to and fro with 
aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface of the 
Eartli (by foot-prints), write his Sorrows of Teufelsdi^bckh ; 
even as the great Goetlie, in i)assionate words, had to write 



140 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

his Sorrows of Wertcr^ befpre the spirit freed herself, and 
he could become a Man. T Vain truly is the hope of your 
swiftest Runner to escape " from his own Shadow " I 
Nevertheless, in these sick clays, when the Born of Heaven 
first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a world 
such as ours, richer than usual in two things, in Truths 
grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete, — what can the 
fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso 
will not speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and 
despair? Whereby it happens that for your nobler minds, 
the publishing of some such Work of Art, in one or the 
other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. For what is it 
properly but an Altercation with the Devil, before you begin 
honestly Fighting him ? Your Byron publishes his Sorrows 
of Lord George^ in verse and in prose, and copiously other- 
wise : your Bonaparte represents his Sorrows of N'apoleon 
Opera, in an ail-too stupendous style ; with music of cannon- 
volleys, and murder-shrieks of a world ; his stage lights are 
the fires of Conflagration ; his rhyme and recitative are the 
tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities. — 
Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, can write 
such matter, since it must be written, on the insensible 
Earth, with his shoe-soles only; and also survive the writing 
thereof !| 

CHAPTER VIL 

THE EVERLASTING NO. 

UNDER the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein, our 
Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his 
spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing : 
for how can the "Son of Time," in any case,- stand still? 



THE EVERLASl'IXG NO. I4I 

We behold him, through those dim years, in a slate of crisis, 
of transition : his mad Pilgrimings. and general solution into 
aimless Discontinuity, wliat is all this but a mad Fermenta- 
tion ; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the clearer product will 
one day evolve itself ? 

Such transitions are ever full of pain : thus the Eagle 
when he moults is sickly ; and, to attain his new beak, must 
harshly dash-off tlie old one upon rocks. What Stoicism 
soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, 
mav affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever of anarchy 
and misery raging within ; coruscations of which flash out: 
as, indeed, how could there be other? Have we not seen 
him disappointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long years? 
All that the young heart might desire and pray for has been 
denied ; nay, as in the last worst instance, offered and then 
snatched away. Ever an "excellent Passivity;" but of 
useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the former as Food 
to Hunger, nothing granted: till at length, in this wild 
Pilgrimage, he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, 
though useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitterness., 
which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 
"ruddy morning" in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at 
the very lip; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood- 
and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses over in 
a deluge of foam. 

/ He himself says once, with more justice than originality : 
I" Man is, properly speaning, based upon Hope, he has no 
other possession but Hope ; this world of his is emphatically 
the Place of Hope.") What, then, was our Professor's 
possession ? We see him, for the present, quite shut-out 
from Hope ; looking not into the golden orient, but vaguely 
all round into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with 
earthquake and tornado. 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Alas, shut-out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we yet 
dream of! For, as he wanders wearisomely through this 
world, he has now lost all tidings of another and higher. 
Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend has 
since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in those days, he 
was wholly irreligious : " Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," 
says he ; *' shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, till 
you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." To such 
readers as have reflected, what can be called reflecting, on 
man's life, and happily discovered, in contradiction to much 
Profit-and-Loss Philosophy, speculative and practical, that 
Soul is not synonymous with Stomach; who understand, 
therefore, in our Friend's words, t that, for man's well-being, 
Faith is properly the one thing needful ; how, with it. 
Martyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame 
and the cross ; and without it. Worldlings puke-up their 
sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of ■ luxury |" to 
such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss 
of his rehgious Belief was the loss of every thing. Unhappy 
young man ! All wounds, the crush of long-continued Desti- 
tution, the stab of false Friendship and of false Love, all 
wounds in thy so genial heart, would have healed again, had 
not its life-warmth been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, 
in his wild way: "Is there no God, then; but at best an 
absentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, at 
the outside of his Universe, and seexwg it go ? Has the 
word Duty no meaning ; is what we call Duty no divine 
Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made-up 
of Desire and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and 
from Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed ? Happiness of an 
approving Conscience ! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom 
admiring men have since named Saint, feel that he was ' the 
chief of sinners;' and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit 







WHKf^EIM IS MRARD ONLY IMF. HOWI.Ixr, OF WILD- BEASTS, OR 1 FIE 
v,HI/|i'K^ oi Ol-m-AIRINf;, M A ri'-I II.I.KI) MKN." — /Va.^-V I43. 



THE lU^ERLASriXG NO. 1 43 

(w/ioloe;;ii:t/i\ spend much of his time in fiddh'ng ? Foolish 
Wordmonger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic-mill hast 
an earthly mechanism for the Godlike itself, and wouldst 
fain grind me out Virtue from the husks of Pleasure, — I 
tell thee, Nay ! To tlie unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus 
of a man, it is ever the bitterest airsfravation of his wretched- 
ness that he is conscious of \'irtue, that he feels himself the 
victim not of suffering only, but of injustice. What then? 
Is the heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion; 
some bubble of the olood, bubbling in the direction others 
pro/it by ? I know not : only this I know, if what thou 
namest Happiness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 
With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may front much. 
But what, in these dull unimaginative days, are the terrors 
of Conscience to the diseases of the Liver! Not on Moral- 
ity, but on Cookery, let us build our stronghold : there 
brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us offer sweet 
incense to the Devil, and live at ease on the fat things he 
has provided for his Elect ! " 

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, as so many 
have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl- 
cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It 
is all a grim Desert, this once-fair world of his ; wherein is 
heard only the howling of wnld-beasts, or the shrieks ot 
despairing, hate-filled men ; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, 
and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer guides the Pilgrim. 
To such length has the spirit of Inquiry carried him. " But 
what boots it {was thuf s)l ''"' cries he: ^' it is but the 
common lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual 
majority prior to the Steele de Louis Quinze, and not being 
horn purely a Loghead {Diiin7nkopf\ thou hadst no other 
outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief ; 
their old Temples of the Godhead, which for long have not 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

been rainproof, crumble clown ; and men ask now : Where 
is the Godhead ; our eyes never saw hhn ? " 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to 
call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we all 
are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more decisively the 
Servant of Goodness, the ServarU^ of God, than even now 
when doubting God's existence, r One circumstance I note," 
says he : "after all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for 
me, what it is not always, was genuine Love of Truth, had 
wrought me, I nevertheless still loved Truth, and would bate 
no jot of my allegiance to her. 'Truth!' I cried, 'though 
the Heavens crush me for following her: no Falsehood! 
though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of 
Apostasy.' In conduct it was the same. Had a divine 
Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on 
the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me This thou shalt do, 
with what passionate readiness, as I often thought, would I 
have done it, had it been leaping into the infernal Fire. 
Thus, in spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit- 
and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallu- 
cination they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of 
Duty still dimly present to me : living without God in the 
world, of God's hght I was not utterly bereft ; if my as yet 
sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, could nowhere 
see Him, nevertheless in my heart He was present, and His 
heaven-written Law still stood legible and sacred there."] 

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal and 
spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in his silent 
soul, have endured ! " The painfullest feeling," writes he, 
"is that of your own Feebleness {Unkraft)\ ever, as the 
English Milton says, to be weak is the true misery. And 
yet of your Strength there is and can be no clear feeling, 
save by what you have prospered in, by what you have done. 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 1 45 

Between vague wavering Capabilitv and fixed indubitable 
Performance, what a difference ! v A certain inarticulate 
Self-consciousness dwells dimly in us ; which only our 
Works can render articulate and decisively discernible. 
Our Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its 
natural lineaments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible 
Precept Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially 
possible one, K710W what thou canst woi'k at. / 

" But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, the 
net-result of my Workings amounted as yet sim.ply to — 
Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, when 
there was as yet no mirror to see it in.^ Ever did this 
agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous question, 
remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain Faculty, a 
certain Worth, such even as the most have not ; or art thou 
the completest Dullard of these modern times ? Alas, the 
fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself ; and how could I 
believe? Had not my first, last Faith in myself, when even 
to me the Heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to love, 
been ail-too cruelly belied ? The speculative Mystery of 
Life grew ever more mysterious to me : neither in the 
practical Mystery had I made the slightest progress, but 
been everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast 
out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, 
I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to 
discern my own wretchedness. Invisible yet impenetrable 
walls, as of Enchantment, divided me from all living : was 
there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could press 
trustfully to mine? O Heaven, No, there was none! I 
kept a lock upon my lips : why should I speak much with 
that shifting variety of so-called Friends, in whose withered, 
vain and too-hungry souls Friendship was but an incredible 
tradition? In such cases, your resource is to talk little, and 



146 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when I look 
back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men and 
women around me, even speaking with me, were but Figures ; 
I had, practically, forgotten that they were alive, that they 
were not merely automatic. In the midst of their crowded 
streets and assemblages, I walked solitary ; and (except as it 
was my own heart, not another's, that I kept devouring) 
savage also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would 
have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted 
and tormented of the Devil ; for a Hell, as I imagine, without 
Life, though only diabolic Life, were more frightful : but in 
our age of Down-pulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has 
been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a 
Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, 
of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, 
immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indiffer- 
ence, to grind me limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, 
solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the Living 
banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there 
is no Devil ; nay, unless the Devil is your God ? " 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, more- 
over, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron constitution 
even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? We conjecture 
that he has known sickness ; and, in spite of his locomotive 
habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic sort. Hear this, for 
example : '' How beautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper ! 
Quite another thing in practice ; every window of your 
Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it were, begrimed and 
mud-bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter ; a whole 
Drugshop in your inwards ; the fordone soul drowning 
slowly in quagmires of Disgust ! " 

Puttinof all wdiich external and internal miseries to^rether, 
may we not find in the following sentences, quite in our 



THE EVERLASTING NO. I47 

Professor's still vein, significance enough? "From Suicide 
a certain aftershine {Nachschein) of Christianity withheld 
me : perhaps also a certain indolence of character; for, was 
not that a remedy I had at any time within reach ? Often, 
however, was there a question present to me : Should some 
one now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly 
out of Space, into the other World, or other No-world, by 
pistol-shot, — how were it? On which ground, too, I have 
often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, 
exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely enough, 
for courage/' 

" So had it lasted,'' concludes the Wanderer, " so had it 
lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through long 
years. The heart within me, unvisited by any heavenly 
dewdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, slow- consuming 
fire. Almost since earliest memory I had shed no tear; 
or once only when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's 
Deathsong, that wild Selig der den er tin Siegesglanze findet 
(Happy whom he finds in Battle's splendor), and thought 
that of this last Friend even I was not forsaken, that 
Destiny itself could not doom me not to die. Having no 
hope, neither had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of 
Devil : nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, could the 
Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to 
me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, 
strangely enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining 
fear ; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not 
what : it seemed as if all things in the Heavens above and 
the Earth beneath would hurt me ; as if the Heavens and the 
Earth were but boundless jaws of a devouring monster, 
wherein I, palpitating, waited to be devoured. 

*' Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest man 
^n the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, one sultry 



fssm 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Dogday, after much perambulation, toiling along the dirty 
little Rue Saint-Thomas de FEjifer^ among civic rubbish 
enough, in a close atmosphere, and over pavements hot as 
Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace ; whereby doubtless my spirits 
were little cheered ; when, all at once, there rose a Thought 
in me, and I asked myself : ' What art thou afraid of ? 
Wherefore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and whimper, 
and go cowering and trembling ? Despicable biped ! what 
is the sum-total of the worst that hes before thee ? Death ? 
Well, Death ; and say the pangs of Tophet too, and all that 
the Devil and Man may, will or can do against thee ! Hast 
thou not a heart ; canst thou not suffer whatsoever it be ; 
and, as a Child of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet 
itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee ? Let it come, 
then ; I will meet it and defy it ! ' And as I so thought, 
there rushed like a stream of fire over my whole soul ; and 
I shook base Fear away from me forever. I was strong, of un- 
known strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from that time, 
the temper of my misery was changed : not Fear or whining 
Sorrow was it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. 
j " Thus had the Everlasting No (das ewige Neln) pealed 
authoritatively through all the recesses of my Being, of my 
Me; and then was it that my whole Me stood up, in native 
God-created majesty, and with emphasis recorded its Protest. 
Such a Protest, the most important transaction in Life, may 
that same Indignation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No had said : 
^Behold, thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is 
mine (the Devil's);' to which my whole Me now made 
answer: '/am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee ! ' 

" It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spiritual 
New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism; perhaps I directly 
thereupon began to be a Man," j 



CENTRE OE IXDIEEERENCE. 1 49 

CHAPTER VIII. 

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 

THOUGH, after this " Baphometic Fire-baptism" o( 
his, our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but 
increased; as, indeed, "Indignation and Defiance," espe- 
cially against things in general, are not the most peaceable 
inmates ; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was no 
longer a quite hopeless Unrest ; that henceforth it had at 
least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the fire-baptized 
soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own 
P>eedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Baptism : the 
citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, 
and will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which the 
remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will 
doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. Under 
another figure, we might say, if in that great moment, in the 
Rue Saint-Thomas dc PEnfer, the old inward Satanic School 
was not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory 
judicial notice to quit ; — whereby, for the rest, its hovvl- 
chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings of 
teeth, might, in the mean while, become only the more 
tumultuous, and difficult to keep secret. 

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, there is 
perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient method in 
their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does Teufelsdrockh 
now storm through the world; at worst as a spectre-fighting 
Man, nay who will one day be a Spectre-queller. If pilgrim- 
ing restlessly to so many " Saints' Wells," and ever without 
quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little secular 



150 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wells, whereby from time to time some alleviation is 
ministered. In a word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet 
intermitting to ^' eat his own heart ; '' and clutches round 
him outwardly on the Not-me for wholesomer food. Does 
not the following glimpse exhibit him in a much more 
natural state ? 

" Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I failed 
not to look upon with interest. How beautiful to see 
thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote Time ; to 
have, as it were, an actual section of almost the earliest Past 
brought safe into the Present, and set before your eyes ! 
There, in that old City, was a live ember of Culinary Fire 
put down, say only two-thousand years ago; and there, 
burning more or less triumphantly, with such fuel as the 
region yielded, it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself 
seest the very smoke thereof. Ah ! and the far more 
mysterious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down 
there ; and still miraculously burns and spreads ; and the 
smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls and 
Churchyards), and its bellows-engines (in these Churches), 
thou still seest ; and its flame, looking out from every kind 
countenance, and every hateful one, still warms thee or 
scorches thee. 

" Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results are 
aeriform, mystic, and preserved in Tradition only : such 
are his Forms of Government, with the Authority they rest 
on ; his Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and of 
Soul-habits ; much more his collective stock of Handicrafts, 
the whole Faculty he has acquired of manipulating Nature : 
all these things, as indispensable and priceless as they are, 
cannot in any way be fixed under lock and key, but must 
flit, spirit-hke, on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son ; 
if you demand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met 




lOWNS ALSO AND CITIIiS, P:S1'KCI.\LLV THE ANCIKNr." — Page I50. 



CENTRE OE EXPIEEERENCE. I 5 I 

with. V^isihle Plouglimen and Hammermen there have 
been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards : but where 
does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other 
Manufacturing Skill lie warehoused ? It transmits itself 
on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays (by Hearing and by 
Vision) ; it is a thing aeriform, impalpable, of quite spiritual 
sort. In like manner, ask me not. Where are the Laws ; 
where is the Government? In vain wilt thou go to 
Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon : 
thou findest nothing there but brick or stone houses, and 
some bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is 
that same cunningly-devised almighty Government of 
theirs to be laid hands on ? Everywhere, yet nowhere ; 
seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, invisible : 
or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So spiritual (geistig) 
is our whole daily Life: all that we do springs out of 
Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only like a little Cloud- 
image, or Armida's Palace, air-built, does the Actual body 
itself forth from the great mystic Deep. 

"Visible and tangible products of the Past, again, I 
reckon-up to the extent of three : Cities, with their 
Cabinets and Arsenals; then tilled Fields, to either or to 
both of which divisions Roads with their Bridges may 
belong; and thirdly — Books. In which third truly, the 
last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that of the two 
others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue of a true Book. 
Not like a dead city of stones, yearly crumbling, yearly 
needing repair; more like a tilled field, but then a spiritual 
field; like a spiritual tree, let me rather say, it stands from 
year to year, and from age to age (we have Books that 
already number some hundred-and-fifty human ages); and 
yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Commentaries, 
Deductions, Philosophical, Political Systems ; or were it 



152 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

only Sermons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one 
of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can persuade 
men. O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in 
the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy 
not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly 
pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner ! Thou 
too art a Conqueror and Victor ; but of the true sort, namely 
over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all 
marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the 
Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, 
whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim. — Fool! why 
journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervor, to 
gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of 
Sacchara? These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and 
inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly enough, for the 
last three-thousand years : but canst thou not open thy 
Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's Version thereof?" 

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in 
Battle, yet on some Battle-field ; which, we soon gather, 
must be that of Wagram ; so that here, for once, is a certain 
approximation to distinctness of date. Omitting much, let 
us impart what follows : 

(" Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed with 
shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead men 
and horses ; stragglers still remaining not so much as buried. 
And those red mould heaps: ay, there lie the Shells of 
Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue" has been blown ; 
and now are they swept together, and crammed-down out of 
sight, like blown Egg-shells! — Did Nature, when she bade 
the Donau bringdown his mould-cargoes Trom the Carinthian 
and Carpathian Heights, and spread them out here into 
the softest, richest level, — intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a 
corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be nursed ; 



CKXT/^E OF IXDIFFEREiXCE. I 53 

or for a Cockpit, wherein tliey might tlie more commodiously 
be throttled and tattered ? Were thy three broad Highways, 
meeting here from the ends of Europe, made for Ammuni- 
tion-wagons, then ? Were tliy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so 
many ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of Hapsburg 
might batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered ? 
Konig Ottokar, amid yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's 
truncheon : here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Napo- 
leon's : within which five centuries, to omit the others, how 
has thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced and defiled ! The 
greensward is torn-up and trampled-down : man's fond care 
of it, his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant dwellings, 
blown-away with gunpowder ; and the kind seedfield lies a 
desolate, hideous Place of Sculls. — Nevertheless, Nature 
is at work : neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their 
utmost devilrv f^rainsav her : but all that ^rore and carna^^^e 
will be shrouded-in, absorbed into manure ; and next year 
the Marchfeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty unwearied 
Nature, ever out of our great waste educing some little 
profit of thy own, — how dost thou, from the very carcass of 
the Killer, bring Life for the Living ! 

f" What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net- 
purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for 
example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of 
Dumdrudge, usually some five-hundred souls. From these, 
by certain ^Natural Enemies' of the French, there are 
successively selected, during the French war. say thirty 
able-bodied men : Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has 
suckled and nursed them : she has, not without difficulty 
and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them 
to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another 
hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone 
avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid mucli weeping and swear- 



154 SAJ^TOR RESARTUS. 

ing, they are selected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped 
away, at the public charges, some two-thousand miles, or 
say only to the south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 
And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty 
similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like 
manner wending: till at length, after infinite effort, the two 
parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands 
fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway 
the word ' Fire ! ' is given : and they blow the souls out of 
one another; and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, 
the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and 
anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy 
as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough 
apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a 
Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Com.merce, some 
mutual helpfulness between them. How then ? Simpleton! 
their Governors had fallen-out; and, instead of shooting one 
another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads 
shoot. — Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all 
other lands ; still as of old, ' what devilry soever Kings do, 
the Greeks must pay the piper!' — In that fiction of the 
EngHsh 'Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War 
is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth ; where the two 
Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled 
with Brimstone ; light the same, and smoke in one another's 
faces, till the weaker gives in : but from such predicted 
Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious cen- 
turies, may still divide us ! " ) 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, look 
away from his own sorrows, over the many-colored world, 
and pertinently enough note what is passing there. We 
may remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual culture, 
if for nothing else, perhaps few periods of his life were 



CENTRE OE /iVn/EEEREA^CE. I 55 

richer than this. Internally, there is the most momentous 
instructive Course of Practical Philosophy, with Experi- 
ments, going on ; towards the right comprehension of 
which his Peripatetic habits, favorable to Meditation, might 
help him rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he 
wanders to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little 
substance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough : in these so 
boundless Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School 
was even partially kept down, what an incredible knowledge 
of our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that is 
to say, of all knowable things, might not Teufelsdrockh 
acquire ! 

*' I have read in most Public Libraries," says he, ^' in- 
cluding those of Constantinople and Samarcand : in most 
Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, 
or seen that there was no studying. Unknown Languages 
have I oftenest gathered from their natural repertory, the 
Air, by my organ of Hearing ; Statistics, Geographies, 
Topographies came, through the Eye, almost of their own 
accord. The ways of Man, how he seeks food, and warmth, 
and protection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly 
known to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted-out much 
of the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses that 
belonged to myself only. 

" Of great Scenes why speak ? Three summer days, I 
lingered reflecting, and even composing (dichtete\ by the 
Pine-chasms of Vaucluse ; and in that clear Lakelet moistened 
my bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of Tadmor; 
smoked a pipe among the ruins of Babylon. The great 
Wall of China I have seen ; and can testify that it is of gray 
brick, coped and covered with granite, and shows only 
second-rate masonry. — Great Events, also, have not I wit- 
nessed ? Kings sweated-down {^mcsgemergelt) into Berlin- 



156 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and-Milan Customhouse-Officers ; the World well won, and 
the World well lost ; oftener than once a hundred-thousand 
individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All kindreds 
and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and 
shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in 
time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith 
convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached 
Heaven, could not escape me. 

/ '-'■ For great Men I have ever had the warmest predilection ; 
and can perhaps boast that few such in this era have wholly 
escaped me. Great Men are the inspired (speaking and 
acting) Texts of that divine Book of Revelations, whereof 
a Chapter is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some 
named History ; to which inspired Texts your numerous 
talented men, and your innumerable untalented men, are 
the better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and wagonload 
of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Sermons. For 
my study, the inspired Texts themselves ! Thus did not I, 
in very early days, having disguised me as tavern-waiter, 
stand behind the field-chairs, under that shady Tree at 
Treisnitz by the Jena Highway; waiting upon the great 
Schiller and greater Goethe ; and hearing what I have not 
forgotten. For " — f 

— But at this point the Editor recalls his principle of 
caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress much. 
Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, of Crowned 
Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a future day, find 
circumstances altered, and the time come for Publication, 
then may these glimpses into the privacy of the Illustrious 
be conceded; which for the present were little better than 
treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord 
Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and 
the " White Water-roses " (Chinese Carbonari) with their 




'•stands TIfKUK ON TMK W( )K[.I )-l'ICO MOXTOK V, I.IkK A MITI.K 
m.CK I'.KM KV.'' — /V/,i,'V' 157. 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. I 57 

mysteries, no notice here ! pf Napoleon himself we shall 
only, glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's relation 
to him seems to have been of very varied character. At first 
we find our poor Professor on the point of being shot as a 
spy; then taken into private conversation, even pinched on 
the ear, yet presented with no money; at last indignantly 
dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an *' Ideologist." 
**He himself," says the Professor, "was among the complet- 
est Ideologists, at least Ideopraxists : in the Idea (in der 
Idee) he lived, moved and fought. The man was a Divine 
Missionary, though unconscious of it; and preached, through 
the cannon's throat, that great doctrine, La carriere oitverte 
aiix iaiens (The Tools to him that can handle them), which 
is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone can liberty 
lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts 
and first Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utterance, 
amid much frothy rant ; yet as articulately perhaps as the 
case admitted. Or call him, if you will, an American P^ack- 
woodsman, who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle 
with innumerable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong 
liquor, rioting, and even theft ; whom, notwithstanding, the 
peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the boundless 
harvest, bless." 

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufelsdrockh's 
appearance and emergence (we know not well whence) in the 
solitude of the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He has 
a *Might-blue Spanish cloak" hanging round him, as his 
" most commodious, principal, indeed sole upper-garment ; " 
and stands there, on the World-promontory, looking over the 
infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now 
motionless indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest 
changes. 

"Silence as of death," writes he ; "for Midnight, even in 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Arctic latitudes, has its character: nothing but the 
granite cHffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow- 
heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost North the 
great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if he too were slumbering. 
Yet is his cloud-couch wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; 
yet does his light stream over the mirror of waters, like a 
tremulous fire-pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and 
hide itself under my feet. In such moments. Solitude also 
is invaluable ; for who would speak, or be looked on, when 
behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, except 
the watchmen ; and before him the silent Immensity, and 
Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp ? 
" Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes a man, or 
monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows ; and, 
shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian 
speech : most probably, therefore, a Russian Smuggler. With 
courteous brevity, I signify my indifference to contraband 
trade, my humane intentions, yet strong wish to be private. 
In vain : the monster, counting doubtless on his superior 
stature, and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps 
profit, were it with murder, continues to advance ; ever 
assailing me with his importunate train-oil breath ; and now 
has advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, 
the deep Sea rippling greedily down below. What argument 
will avail 1 On the thick Hyperborean, cherubic reasoning, 
seraphic eloquence were lost. Prepared for such extremity, 
I, deftly enough, whisk aside one step ; draw out, from my 
interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham Horse-pistol, 
and say, 'Be so obliging as retire, Friend {Er ziehe sich 
zuriick^ Freund\ and with promptitude ! ' This logic even 
the Hyperborean understands : fast enough, with apologetic, 
petitionary growl, he sidles off ; and, except for suicidal as 
well as homicidal purposes, need not return. 



CEXTKE OF IXDIFFKRENCE. I 59 

^* Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder : that it 
makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, cleverer than 
I, if thou have more Mijid^ though all but no Body whatever, 
then canst thou kill me hrst, and art the taller. Hereby, 
at last, is the Goliath powerless, and the David resistless; 
savage Animalism is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is 
all. 

/ '' \\ ith respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. 
Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with more 
surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, hovering with 
insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the Unfathom- 
able, and to dissolve therein, at any rate, very soon, — make 
pause at the distance of twelve paces asunder ; whirl round ; 
and, simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, explode 
one another into Dissolution; and off-hand become Air, and 
Non-extant ! Deuce on it {verdammt\ the little spitfires ! — 
Nay, I think with old Hugo von Trimberg: 'God must 
needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his 
wondrous Manikins here below.' 'Q 

But amid these specialties, let us not forget the great 
generality, which is our chief quest here : How prospered 
the inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so much outward 
shifting ? Does Legion still lurk in him, though repressed ; 
or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood ? We can answer 
that the symptoms continue promising. Experience is the 
grand spiritual Doctor ; and with him Teufelsdrockh has 
now been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. 
Unless our poor Friend belong to the numerous class of 
Incurables, which seems not likely, some cure will doubtless 
be effected. We should rather say that Legion, or the 
Satanic School, was now pretty well extirpated and cast out, 
but next to nothing introduced in its room; whereby the 



l6o SARTOR RESARTUS, 

heart remains, for the while, in a quiet but no comfortable 
state. 

" At length, after so much roasting," thus writes our 
Autobiographer, '' I was what you might name calcined. 
Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent 
issue, reduced to a capiit-mortttuin I But in any case, by 
mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many 
things. Wretchedness was still wretched ; but I could now 
partly see through it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, 
in this inane Existence, had I not found a Shadow-hunter, 
or Shadow-hunted ; and, when I looked through his brave 
garnitures, miserable enough 1 Thy wishes have all been 
sniffed aside, thought I : but what, had they even been all 
granted ! Did not the Boy Alexander weep because he had 
not tw^o Planets to conquer; or a whole Solar System; or 
after that, a whole Universe 1 Ach Gott^ when I gazed into 
these Stars, have they not looked-down on me as if with pity, 
from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glistening with heavenly 
tears over the little lot of man ! Thousands of human 
generations, all as noisy as our own, have been swallowed- 
up of Time, and there remains no wreck of them any more ; 
and Arcturus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are 
still shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the 
Shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! 
what is this paltry little Dog-cage of an Earth ; what art 
thou that sittest whining there .^ Thou art still Nothing, 
Nobody : true ; but who, then, is Something, Somebody 1 
For thee the Family of Man has no use ; it rejects thee ; 
thou art wholly as a dissevered limb : so be it ; perhaps it is 
better so ! '* 

Too-heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his bands 
are loosening; one day he will hurl the burden far from him, 
and bound forth free and with a second youth. 



[ 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. l6l 

'* This," says our Professor, " was the Centre of 
Indifferenxe I had now reached ; through which whoso 
travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive must neces- 
sarily pass." 

CHAPTER IX. 

THE EVERLASTING YEA. 

TEMPTATIONS in the Wilderness ! " exclaims Teufels- 
drockh : " Have we not all to be tried with such ? 
Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be 
dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Necessity; 
yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than Freedom, 
than Voluntary Force : thus have we a warfare ; in the 
beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. For the God- 
given mandate, Work thoit in Welldoings lies mysteriously 
written, in Promethean Prophetic Characters, in our hearts; 
and leaves us no rest, night or day, till it be deciphered and 
obeyed ; till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted 
Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat 
thou a)id be filled^ "bX the same time persuasively proclaims 
itself through every nerve, — must not there be a confusion, 
a contest, before the better Influence can become the upper 

" To me nothing seems more natural than that the Son 
of Man, when such God-given mandate first prophetically 
stirs within him, and the Clay must now be vanquished 
or vanquish, — should be carried of the spirit into grim 
Solitudes, and there fronting the Tempter do grimmest 
battle with him ; defiantly setting him at naught, till he 
yield and fly. Name it as we choose : with or without 
visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and 
sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and 



\] 



1 62 SAR TOR RES A R TUS, 

baseness, — to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy 
if we are not ! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom 
that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, 
in true sun-splendor ; but quivers dubiously amid meaner 
lights : or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly 
vapors ! — Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic 
Century ; our Forty Days are long years of suffering and 
fasting : nevertheless, to these also comes an end. Yes, to 
me also was given, if not Victory, yet the consciousness 
of Battle, and the resolve to persevere therein while life or 
faculty is left. To me also, entangled in the enchanted 
forests, demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it 
was given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way 
into the higher sunlit slopes — of that Mountain which has 
no summit, or whose summit is in Heaven only ! '* 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; as 
figures are, once for all, natural to him : " Has not thy Life 
been that of most sufficient men {tiichtigen Mdmter) thou. 
hast known in this generation ? An outflush of foolish 
young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, Avherein are 
as many weeds as valuable herbs : this all parched away, 
under the Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, as 
Disappointment, in thought and act, often-repeated gave rise 
to Doubt, and Doubt gradually settled into Denial ! If I 
have had a second-crop, and now see the perennial green- 
sward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy all 
Drought (and Doubt); herein too, be the Heavens praised, 
I am not without examples, and even exemplars." 

So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has been a "glorious 
revolution : " these mad shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted 
Pilgrimings of his were but some purifying "Temptation in 
the Wilderness," before his apostohc work (such as it was) 
could begin ; which Temptation i§ now happily over, and 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 1 63 

the Devil once more worsted ! Was "■ that high moment 
in the Riie de rEnfer.'' then, properly the turning point of 
the battle; when the Fiend said, Worship inc or be torn 
in shreds J and was answered valiantly with an Apa^e 
Satana? — Singular Teufelsdrockli, would thou hadst told 
thy singular story in plain words! But it is fruitless to 
look there, in those Paper-bags, for such. Nothing but 
innuendoes, figurative crotchets a typical Shadow, fitfully 
wavering, prophetico-satiric-, no clear logical Picture. '' How 
paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, " what passes in the 
Holy-of- Holies of Man's Soul; in what words, known to 
these profane times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable?" 
We ask in turn : Why perplex these times, profane as they 
are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by commission? 
Not mystical only is our Professor, but wdiimsical ; and 
involves himself, now more than ever, in eye-bewildering 
chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, here faithfully imparted, 
our more gifted readers must endeavor to combine for their 
own behoof. 

He says : " The hot Harmattan wind had raged itself out; 
its howl went silent within me ; and the long-deafened soul 
could now hear. I paused in my wild wanderings ; and sat 
me down to wait, and consider ; for it was as if the hour of 
change drew nigh. I seemed to surrender, to renounce 
utterly, and say : Fly, then, false shadows of Hope ; I will 
chase you no more, I will believe you no more. And ye 
too, haggard spectres of Fear, I care not for you ; ye too 
are all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here : for I am 
way- weary and life-weary ; I will rest here, were it but to 
die: to die or to live is alike to me ; alike insignificant." — 
And again : " Here, then, as I lay in that Centre of 
IxDiFFERENXE; cast, doubtless by benignant upper Influ- 
ence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually 



164 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new Earth. 'The 
first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation of Self (Selbst- 
tddtun^\ had been happily accomplished ; and my mind's 
eyes were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved." ) 

Might we not also conjecture that the following passage 
refers to his Locality, during this same "healing sleep;'' 
that his Pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, on '' the high 
table-land;" and indeed that the repose is already taking 
wholesome effect on him ? If it were not that the tone, in 
some parts, has more of riancy, even of levity, than we could 
have expected ! However, in Teufelsdrockh, there is always 
the strangest Dualism : light dancing, with guitar-music, 
will be going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within 
comes the faint whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe 
the piece entire. 

'' Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, musing 
and meditating; on the high table-land, in front of the 
Mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, and around 
me, for walls, four azure-flowing curtains, — namely, of the 
Four azure Winds, on whose bottom-fringes also I have 
seen gilding. And then to fancy the fair Castles that 
stood sheltered in these Mountain hollows ; with their 
green flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, lovely 
enough : or better still, the straw-roofed Cottages, wherein 
stood many a Mother baking bread, with her children round 
her: — all hidden and protectingly folded-up in the valley- 
folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or 
to see, as well as fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that 
lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were 
wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal 
tongue ; and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality 
by repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon, as on a cuHnary 
horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was the 



THE EVERLAST/iVG YEA. 1 65 

smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at morning, midday, 
eventide, were boiling their husbands* kettles; and ever a 
blue pillar rose up into the air, successively or simultane- 
ously, from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke 
could say : Such and such a meal is getting ready here. 
Not uninteresting I For you have the whole Borough, with 
all its love-makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions and 
contentments, as in miniature, and could cover it all with 
your hat. — If, in my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look 
into the business of the World in its details, here perhaps 
was the place for combining it into general propositions, and 
deducing inferences therefrom. 

'^ Often also could I see the black Tempest marching in 
anger through the Distance : round some Schreckhorn, as 
yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapor gather, and there 
tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad witch's hair-, 
till, after a space, it vanished, and, in the clear sunbeam, 
your Schreckhorn stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor 
had held snow. How thou fermentest and elaboratest, in 
thy great fenmenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, 
of a World,^ Nature ! — Or what is Nature ? Ha ! why do 
I not name thee God? Art not thou the ' Livinof Garment 
of God?' O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He, then, that 
ever speaks through thee: that lives and loves in thee, 
that lives and loves in me ?/ 

('* Fore-shadows, call tliem rather fore-splendors, of that 
Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously over my 
soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova 
Zembla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little child that 
strays bewildered, weeping, in unknown tumults; like soft 
streamings of celestial music to my too-exasperated heart, 
came that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and demo- 
niacal, a charnel-house with spectres ; but godlike, and my 
Father's ' 



l66 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my fellow 
man: with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. Poor, wander- 
ing, wayward man ! Art thou not tried, and beaten with 
stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whether thou bear the royal 
mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art thou not so weary, so 
heavy-laden ; and thy Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my 
Brother, my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my 
bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes ! — Truly, 
the din of many-voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the 
mind's organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening 
discord, but a melting one ; like inarticulate cries, and 
sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven 
are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor joys, was now 
my needy Mother, not my cruel Stepdame ; Man, with his 
so mad Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become the 
dearer to me ; and even for his sufferings and his sins, I 
now first named him Brother. Thus was I standing in the 
porch of that ''Sanctuary of Sorrow ; ^ by strange, steep 
ways had I too been guided thither ; and ere long its sacred 
gates would open, and the ' Divine Depth of Sorrow ' lie 
disclosed to me." 

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the Knot that 
had been strangling him, and straightway could unfasten it, 
and was free. ^' A vain interminable controversy," writes 
he, "touching what is at present called Origin of Evil, or 
some such thing, arises in every soul, since the beginning 
of the world; and in every soul, that would pass from idle 
Suffering into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an end 
to. The most, in our time, have to go content with a simple, 
incomplete enough Suppression of this controversy; to a 
few some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, 
too, such Solution comes-out in different terms; and ever 
the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, and is 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 1 6/ 

found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to change his 
Dialect from century to century ; he cannot help it though 
he would. The authentic Chtcrch-Catechism of our present 
century has not yet fallen into my hands : meanwhile, for 
my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate the matter so. 
/ Man's Unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness ; 
it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his 
cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. Will the 
whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and Confectioners 
of modern Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to 
make one Shoeblack happy ? They cannot accomplish it, 
above an hour or two : for the Shoeblack also has a Soul 
quite other than his Stomach ; and would require, if you 
consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, 
simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God^s iiijinite 
Universe altogether to hwiself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and 
fill every wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a 
Throat like that of Ophiuchus : speak not of them; to the 
infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is your 
ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have been of 
better vintage. Try him w^ith half of a Universe, of an 
Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of 
the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated 
of men. — Always there is a black spot in our sunshine : it is 
even, as I said, the Shadow of Ourselves, \ 

'* But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat thus. 
By certain valuations, and averages, of our own striking, 
we come upon some sort of average terrestrial lot; this w^e 
fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeasible right. 
It is simple payment of our wages, of our deserts ; requires 
neither thanks nor complaint ; only such overplus as there 
may be do we account Happiness ; any deficit again is 
Misery. Now consider that we have the valuation of our 



l68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

own deserts ourselves, and what a fund of Self-conceit there 
is in each of us, — do you wonder that the balance should so 
often dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry : See 
there, what a payment ; was ever worthy gentleman so used ! 
— I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity ; of what 
\k\0Vi fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that 
thou deservest to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt 
feel it happiness to be only shot : fancy that thou deservest 
to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in 
hemp. 

" So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of Life 
can be increased in valiie not so much by increasing yoiir 
Nicjnerator as by lessening your Denoininator, Nay, unless 
my Algebra deceive me, Unity itself divided by Zero will 
give hifinity. Make thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou 
hast the world under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our 
time write : ^ It is only with Renunciation {Entsagen) that 
Life, properly speaking, can be said to begin.' 

" I asked myself : What is this that, ever since earliest 
years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lamenting 
and self-tormenting, on account of "^ Say it in a word : is 
it not because thou art not happy .^ Because the Thou 
(sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, nourished, 
soft-bedded, and lovingly cared-for ? Foolish soul! What 
Act of Legislature was there that thou shouldst be Happy 1 
A little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. What if 
thou wert born and predestined not to be Happy, but to be 
Unhappy ! Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, 
that fliest through the Universe seeking after somewhat to 
eat; and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not 
given thee ? Close thy Byj^on; open thy Goethe,''^ 

** Es leuchtet viir ein^ I see a glimpse of it ! " cries he 
elsewhere: *' there is in man a Higher than Love of 



THE EVERLASTIiVG YEA, 169 

Happiness : he can do without Happiness, and instead 
thereof find Blessedness ! Was it not to preach-forth this 
same Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and the 
Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered; bearing 
testimony, throudi life and throuo:h death, of the Godlike 
that is in Man, and how in the Godlike only has he 
Strength and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine art 
thou also honored to be taught ; O Heavens ! and broken 
with manifold merciful Afflictions, even till thou become 
contrite, and learn it ! O, thank thy Destiny for these ; 
thankfully bear what yet remain : thou hadst need of them; 
the Self in thee needed to be annihilated. By benignant 
fever-paroxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic 
Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring billows 
of Time, thou art Jiot engulfed, but borne aloft into the 
azure of Eternity. I Love not Pleasure ; love God. This is 
the Everlasting Yea , wherein all contradiction is solved : 
wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with him.") 

And again : *' Small is it that thou canst trample the 
Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek Zeno 
trained thee : thou canst love the Earth while it injures 
thee, and even because it injures thee; for this a Greater 
than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Knowest thou 
that ' Worship of Sorrow ' ? The Temple thereof, founded 
some eighteen centuries ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown 
with jungle, the habitation of doleful creatures : nevertheless, 
venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched out of falling frag- 
ments, thou findest the Altar still there, and its sacred 
Lamp perennially burning." 

Without pretending to comment on which strange utter- 
ances, the Editor will only remark, that there lies beside 
them much of a still more questionable character; unsuited 
to the general apprehension ; nay wherein he himself does 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on Religion, yet not 
without bursts of splendor; on the "perennial continuance 
of Inspiration;" on Prophecy; that there are "true Priests, 
as well as Baal-Priests, in our own day : " with more of the 
like sort. We select some fractions, by way of finish to this 
farrago. 

" Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," thus 
apostrophizes the Professor: "shut thy sweet voice; for 
the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently hast 
thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable or other- 
wise : That the Mythus of the Christian Religion looks not 
in the eighteenth century as it did in the eighth. Alas, were 
thy six-and-thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand 
other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed 
before and since on the same subject, all needed to convince 
us of so little ! But what next ? Wilt thou help us to 
embody the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, 
in a new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too 
like perishing, may live ? What ! thou hast no faculty in 
that kind ? Only a torch for burning, no hammer for 
building? Take our thanks, then, and — thyself away. 

"Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? Or 
is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing which Herr 
von Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or dispute into me ? 
To the '- Worship of Sorrow ' ascribe what origin and 
genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship originated, 
and been generated ; is it not here ? Feel it in thy heart, 
and then say whether it is of God ! This is Belief ; all else 
is Opinion, — for vv^hich latter whoso will, let him worry and 
be worried." 

"Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye tear-out one 
another's eyes, struggling over * Plenary Inspiration,' and 
suchlike: try rather to get a little even Partial Inspiration, 



THE El'ERLASTING VEA. \*J\ 

each of you for himself. One Bible I know, of whose 
Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as possible ; nay 
with my own eyes I saw the God's-Hand writing it : thereof 
all other Bibles are but Leaves, — say, in Picture- Writing 
to assist the weaker faculty." 

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to an 
end, let him take the following perhaps more intelligible 
passage : 

"To me, in this our life,'' says the Professor/" which is 
an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other warfare 
seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a Contention 
with thy brother, I advise thee, think well what the meaning 
thereof is. If thou gauge it to the bottom, it is simply 
this: 'Fellow, see! thou art taking more than thy share of 
Happiness in the world, something from ;/// share : which, 
by the Heavens, thou shalt not ; nay I will fight thee rather.' 

— Alas, and the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly 
matter, truly a 'feast of shells,' for the substance has been 
spilled out: not enough to quench one Appetite; and the 
collective human species clutching at them ! — Can we not, 
in all such cases, rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous 
individual ; take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, 
which I reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest ; take 
it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee ! ' 

— If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, 'to a certain extent. 
Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, so is 
this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half 
Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as we 
can demonstrate it! ) 

" But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is 
worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly 
Conviction is not possible till then ; inasmuch as all Specu- 
lation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices; 



l^Jl SARTOR RESARTUS. 

only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it 
find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a 
system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 
^ Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.' 
On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in 
darkness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the 
dawn may ripen into day, lay this other jiTecept well to heart, 
which to me was of invaluable service : ^Do the Duty which 
lies 7iearest thee^^ which thou knowest to be a Duty 1 Thy 
second Duty will already have become clearer. \ 

" May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual 
Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal World, 
wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inex- 
pressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown 
open; and you discover, with amazement enough, like the 
Lothario in Wilhehn Meister^ that your ' America is here or 
nowhere ' ? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, 
was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, 
miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, w^herein thou even 
now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out 
therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the 
Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy 
Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal 
out of : whit matters Vv^hether such stuff be of this sort 
or that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? 
O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and 
criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule 
and create, know this of a truth : the thing thou seekest 
is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only 
see ! 

"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the 
beginning of Creation is — Light. Till the eye have vision, 
the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when 



PAUSE. 173 

over the tempest-tost Soul, as once ov^er the wild-weltering 
Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the 
greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and 
God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the 
simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; 
the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into 
separate Firmaments : deep silent rock-foundations are built 
beneath : and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries 
above : instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, 
fertile, heaven-encompassed World. 

*• I too could now say to myself : Be no longer a Chaos, 
but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce ! Produce ! 
Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, 
produce it, in God's name ! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in 
thee : out with it, then. Up, up ! Whatsoever thy hand 
hndeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is 
called To-day ; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can 
work." \ 

CHAPTER X. 

PAUSE. 

THL'S have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily 
as, in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufels- 
drockh through the various successive states and stages of 
Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, 
into a certain clearer state of what he himself seems to 
consider as Conversion. *' Blame not the word," says he; 
"rejoice rather that such a word, signifying such a thing, 
has come to light in our modern Era, though hidden from 
the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew nothing of 
Conversion ; instead of an Ecce Homo^ they had only some 



174 ^ SARTOR RESARTUS. • 

Choice of Hercules, It was a new-attained progress in the 
Moral Development of man : hereby has the Highest come 
home to the bosoms of the most Limited ; what to Plato was 
but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now cleai 
and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the 
poorest of their Pietists and Methodists." 

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufelsdrockh 
commences: we are henceforth to see him "work in well- 
doing," with the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has 
discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so panted for is even 
this same Actual ill-furnished Workshop he has so long 
been stumbling in. He can say to himself :" Tools? Thou 
hast no Tools ? Why, there is not a Man, or a Thing, now 
alive but has tools. The basest of created animalcules, the 
Spider itself, has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and 
power-loom within its head : the stupidest of Oysters has a 
Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it in: 
every being that can live can do something: this let him do. 
— Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, furnishable 
with some glimmerings of Light; and three fingers to hold a 
Pen withal ? Never since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, 
or even before it, was there such a wonder-working Tool: 
greater than all recorded miracles have been performed by 
Pens. For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which 
nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed that 
j-^^/^rt^, to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most 
continuing of all things. The Word is well said to be 
omnipotent in this world ; man, thereby divine, can create as 
by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! Speak forth what is in thee ; 
what God has given thee, what the Devil shall not take 
away. Higher task than that of Priesthood was allotted to 
no man : werl thou but the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, 
\s it not honor enough therein to spend and be spent? 




"NEVER WAS THERE SUCH A WONDER-WORKING TOOL." — Page 174. 



PAUSE. 175 

''By this Art, wliich wlioso will may sacrilegiously degrade 
into a handicraft/' adds Teufelsdrockh, " have I thenceforth 
abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed known as mine (for 
what am //), have fallen, perhaps not altogether void, into 
the mighty seed-field of Opinion; fruits of my unseen sowing 
gfatifyingly meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens 
that I have now found my Calling; wherein, with or without 
perceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 

"Nay how knowest thou," cries he, ''but this and the 
other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world-renowned 
far-working Institution; like a grain of right mustard-seed 
once cast into the right soil, and now stretching-out strong 
boughs to the four winds, for th^ birds of the air to lodge in, 
— may have been properly my doing? Some one's doing, it 
without doubt was ; from some Idea, in some single Head, 
it did first of all take beginning: why not from some Idea in 
mine ? " Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at that " Society 
FOR THE Conservation of Property {Eigenthu7ns-conser- 
virende Gesellschaft)^'' of which so many ambiguous notices 
glide spectre-like through these inexpressible Paper-bags? 
"An Institution," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants of 
the time; as indeed such sudden extension proves: for already 
can the Society number, among its office-bearers or corre- 
sponding members, the highest Names, if not the highest 
Persons, in Germany, England, France ; and contributions, 
both of money and of meditation, pour in from all quarters ; 
to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, 
and, defensively and with forethought, marshal it round 
this Palladium. '* Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give 
himself out as the originator of that so notable Eigenthums- 
conservirettde (" Owndom-conserving '*) Gesellschaft j and 
if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it ? He again hints : " At 
a time wlien the divine Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, 



176 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wherein truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole 
Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitu- 
tions, Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all 
Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that 
man has hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar-fire and 
Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: at a time, I say, 
when this divine Commandment has ail-but faded away from 
the general remembrance ; and, with little disguise, a new 
opposite Commandment, Thoii shalt steal, is everywhere 
promulgated, — (it perhaps behoved, in this universal dotage 
and deliration, the sound portion of mankind to bestir them- 
selves and rally. When the widest and wildest violations of 
that divine right of Property, the only divine right now extant 
or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended by a vicious 
Press, and the world has lived to hear it asserted that we 
have no Property in our very Bodies^ but only an accidental 
Possession and Life-rent^ what is the issue to be looked for? 
Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and 
baited fall-traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin ; but 
what, except perhaps some such Universal Association, can 
protect us against whole meat-devouring and man-devouring 
hosts of Boa-constrictors ? If, therefore, the more seques- 
tered Thinker have wondered, in his privacy, from what 
hand that perhaps not ill-written Progra7n in the Public 
Journals, with its high Prize-Questions and so liberal Prizes^ 
could have proceeded, —let him now cease such wonder; 
and, with undivided faculty, betake himself to the Conctcrrenz 
(Competition)." 

We ask : Has this same " perhaps not ill-written Prograin^"^ 
or any other authentic Transaction of that Property-conserv- 
ing Society, fallen under the eye of the British Reader, in 
any Journal foreign or domestic ? If so, what are those 
Prize-Questions ; what are the terms of Competition, and 



PAUSE. 177 

when and where ? No printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther 
light of any sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags ! Or 
is the whole business one other of those whimsicalities and 
perverse inexplicabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, 
meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast- 
and-loose with us ? 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance to 
a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has begun 
to haunt him ; paralyzing any little enthusiasm that might 
still have rendered his thorny Biographical task a labor of 
love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps on trifles, yet 
confirmed almost into certainty by the more and more 
discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, 
in whom underground humors and intricate sardonic 
rogueries, w^heel within wheel, defy all reckoning : a suspi- 
cion, in one word, that these Autobiographical Documents 
are partly a mystification ! What if many a so-called Fact 
were little better than a Fiction ; if here we had no direct 
Camera-obscura Picture of the Professor's History; but 
only some more or less fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, 
perhaps significantly enough, shadowing-forth the same ! 
Our theory begins to be that, in receiving as literally authen- 
tic what was but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, 
whom in that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose- 
of Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of 
others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man so known 
for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, would all at 
once frankly unlock his private citadel to an English Editor 
and a German Hofrath ; and not rather deceptively /;/lock 
both Editor and Hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and 
covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed them thither), 
to see, in his half-devilish way, how the fools would look? 



178 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps 
find himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown aside 
as blank, the ink being ail-but invisible, we lately notice, and 
with effort decipher, the following : *' What are your histori- 
cal Facts; still more your biographical? Wilt thou know 
a Man, above all a Mankind, b3|.stringing-together beadrolls 
of what thou namest Facts ? \The Man is the spirit he 
worked in ; not what he did, but what he became. ) Facts 
are engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the 
key. And then how your Blockhead {Duininkopf) studies 
not their Meaning; but simply whether they are well or ill 
cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral! Still worse is it with 
your Bungler (Pfuscher): such I have seen reading some 
Rousseau, with pretences of interpretation; and mistaking 
the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for a common poisonous 
reptile." Was the Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, 
selected as the present boasts himself, might mistake the 
Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of-Eternity in like manner? For 
which reason it was to be altered, not without underhand 
satire, into a plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his 
half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but set on the 
back of a Figure, he cares not whither it gallop ? We say 
not with certainty ; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, 
.can never say. If our suspicion be wholly unfounded, let 
his own questionable ways, not our necessary circumspect- 
ness, bear the blame. 

But be this as it will, the somewhat^ exasperated and 
indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these 
Paper-bags for the present. Let it suffice that we know of 
Teufelsdrockh, so far, if " not what he did, yet what he 
became : " the rather, as his character has now taken its 
ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, is to be 
looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged 



PA USE. I 79 

Psyche: and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will continue. 
To trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involuntary 
waftings) through the mere external Life-element, Teufels- 
drockh reaches his University Professorship, and the Psyche 
clothes herself in civic Titles, without altering her now 
fixed nature, — would be comparatively an unproductive task, 
were we even unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a 
false and impossible one. His outward Biography, there- 
fore, which, at the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned 
utterly into spray- vapor, may hover in that condition, for 
aught that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of 
certain " pools and plashes," we have ascertained its general 
direction ; do we not already know that, by one way and 
other, it has long since rained-down again into a stream; 
and even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught 
with the Philosophy of Clothes, and visible to whoso will 
cast eye thereon "^ Over much invaluable matter, that lies 
scattered, like jewels among c^uarry-rubbish, in those Paper- 
catacombs, we may have occasion to glance back, and some- 
what will demand insertion at the right place : meanwhile 
be our tiresome diggings therein suspended. 

If now, before re-opening the great Clothes-Volume, we ask 
what our degree of progress, during these Ten Chapters, has 
been, towards right understanding of the Clothes-Philosophy, 
let not our discouragement become total. To speak in that 
old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge over Chaos, a few flying 
pontoons have perhaps been added, though as yet they drift 
straggling on the Flood ; how far they will reach, when once 
the chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, 
only be matter of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate : Through many a little 
loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world of 
Teufelsdrockh; his strange mystic, almost magic Diagram 



l80 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

of the Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is not 
henceforth altogether dark to us. Those mysterious ideas 
on Time, which merit consideration, and are not wholly 
unintelHgible with such, may by and by prove significant. 
Still more may his somewhat peculiar view of Nature, the 
decisive Oneness he ascribes to Nature. How all Nature 
and Life are but one Garme7tt, a " Living Garment," woven 
and evej aweaving in the '^ Loom of Time ; " is not here, 
indeed, the outline of a whole Clothes-Philosophy ; at least 
the arena it is to work in 1 Remark, too, that the Character 
of the Man, nowise without meaning in such a matter, 
becomes less enigmatic : amid so much tumultuous obscu- 
rity, almost like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable 
Defiance and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom 
forth, as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock-strata all 
the rest were based and built ? 

Nay further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's Biog- 
raphy, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hieroglyphical 
truth, exhibits a man, as it were pre-appointed for Clothes- 
Philosophy ? To look through the Shows of things, into 
Things themselves he is led and compelled. The " Passiv- 
ity " given him by birth is fostered by all turns of his 
fortune. Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from 
mingling in any Employment, in any public Communion, he 
has no portion but Solitude, and a life of Meditation. The 
whole energy of his existence is directed, through long years, 
on one task : that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure it. 
Thus everywhere do the Shows of things oppress him, with- 
stand him, threaten him with fearfullest destruction : only by 
victoriously penetrating into Things themselves can he find 
peace and a stronghold. (But is not this same looking- 
through the Shows, or Vestures, into the Things, even the 
first preliminary to a Philosophy of Clothes fy Do we not, 



PAUSE, i8r 

in all th s, discern some beckonings towards the true higher 
purport of such a Philosophy ; and what shape it must 
assume with such a man, in such an era ? 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous Reader 
is not utterly without guess whither he is bound : nor, let us 
hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottos through which, as 
is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must wander, will there be 
wanting between whiles some twinkling of a steady Polar 
Star. 



BOOK THIRD. 



CHAPTER I. 

INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 

AS a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teufels- 
drockh, from an early part, of this Clothes- Volume, has 
more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid ail 
his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and of 
heart he pierced into the mystery of the World ; recognizing 
in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as Sense went, 
only fresh or faded Raiment ; yet ever, under this, a celestial 
Essence thereby rendered visible : /and while, on the one 
hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, with their tinsels, into 
the mire, he on the other everywhere exalted Spirit above 
all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped it, 
though under the meanest L^hapes, with a true Platonic 
mysticism. /What the man ultimately purposed by thus 
casting his Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the 
Universe ; what such, more or less complete, rending and 
burning of Garments throughout the whole compass of 
Civilized Life and Speculation, should lead to ; the rather 
as he was no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like 
Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, 
and a return to the savage state : all this our readers are 
now bent to discover ; this is, in fact, properly the gist and 
purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes. 



nVCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. I 83 

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is liere not 
so much evolved, as detected to lie ready for evolving. We 
are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold-country, 
and show them the mines; nowise to dig-out and exhasut 
its wealth, which indeed remains for all time inexhaustible. 
Once there, let each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this of 
the Professor's, can our course now more than formerly be 
straightforward, step by step, but at best leap by leap. 
Significant Indications stand-out here and there ; which for 
the critical eye, that looks both widely and narrowly, shape 
themselves into some ground-scheme of a Whole : to select 
these with judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be 
possible, and (in our old figure) by chaining them together, 
a passable Bridge be effected : this, as heretofore, continues 
our only method. Among such light-spots, the following, 
floating in much wild matter about Perfectibility^ has seemed 
worth clutching at : 

'' Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern 
History," says Teufelsdrockh, " is not the Diet of Worms, 
still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any 
other Battle ; but an incident passed carelessly over by most 
Historians, and treated with some degree of ridicule by 
others : namely, George Fox's making to himself a suit of 
Leather. This man, the first of the Quakers, and by trade 
a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, under ruder or 
purer form, the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to 
manifest itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and 
earthly Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awful- 
ness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: who therefore are 
rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed ; or even Gods, 
as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his stall; 
working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin, 



1 84 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, this youth 
had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit belonging to him ; also 
an antique Inspired Volume, through which, as through a 
window, it could look upwards, and discern its celestial 
Home. The task of a daily pair of shoes, coupled even 
with some prospect of victuals, and an honorable Mastership 
in Cordwainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in 
his hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing, — was 
nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind : but ever amid 
the boring and hammering came tones from that far country, 
came Splendors and Terrors ; for this poor Cordwainer, as 
we said, was a man; and the Temple of Immensity, wherein 
as Man he had been sent to minister, was full of holy 
mystery to him. 

"The Clergy of the neighborhood, the ordained Watchers 
and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, listened with 
unaffected tedium to his consultations, and advised him, as 
the solution of such doubts, to ' drink beer and dance with 
the girls.' Blind leaders of the Wind ! For what end were 
their tithes levied and eaten ; for what were their shovel- 
hats scooped-out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons 
girt-on ; and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and 
organing, and other racketing, held over that spot of God's 
Earth, — if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the Belly 
with its adjuncts the grand Reality ? Fox turned from 
them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his Leather- 
parings and his Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher 
than ^tna, had been heaped over that Spirit : but it was a 
Spirit, and would not lie buried there. Through long days 
and nights of silent agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a 
man's force, to be free : how its prison-mountains heaved 
and swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to 
this hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven^ 




"let some living ANGELO or ROSA PICTURE GEORGE FOX."— P^^^ 185. 



J.XCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY, I 85 

That Leicester slioesliop, liad men known it, was a holier 
place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrinc. — ^ So bandaged, 
and hampered, and hemmed in,' groaned he, 'with thousand 
requisitions, obligations, straps, tatters, and tagrags, I can 
neither see nor move : not my own am I, but the World's ; 
and Time Hies fast, and Heaven is high, and Piell is deep: 
Man! bethink thee, if thou hast power of Thought! Why 
not; what binds me here? Want, w^int ! — Ha, of what? 
Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across 
into that far Land of Light? Only Meditation can, and 
devout prayer to God. I will to the woods : the hollow of 
a tree will lodge me, wild-berries feed me ; and for Clothes, 
cannot I stitch myself one perennial suit of Leather ! ' 

''Historical Oil-painting,*' continues Teufelsdrockh, "is 
one of the Arts I never practised; therefore shall I not decide 
whether this subject were easy of execution on the canvas. 
Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first outflashing 
of man's Freewill, to lighten, more and more into Day, the 
Chaotic Night that threatened to engulf him in its hindrances 
and its horrors, w^ere properly the only grandeur there is in 
History. Let some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye 
and understanding heart, picture George P^ox on that 
morning, when he spreads-out his cutting-board for the last 
time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted patterns, and stitches 
them together into one continuous all-including Case, the 
farewell service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble Fox: 
every prick of that little instrument is pricking into the heart 
of Slavery, and World-worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy 
elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every stroke 
is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, within which Vanity 
holds her Workhouse and Ragfair, into lands of true 
Liberty; \vere the work done, there is in broad Europe one 
Free Man, and thou art he ! 



1 86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the loftiest 
height; and for the Poor also a Gospel has been published. 
Surely if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illustrious namesake, 
Diogenes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only that he 
wanted Decency, then by stronger reason is George Fox the 
greatest of the Moderns, and greater than Diogenes himself : 
for he too stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, 
casting aside all props and shores ; yet not, in half-savage 
Pride, undervaluing the Earth ; valuing it rather, as a place 
to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward from 
his Earth, and dwells in an element of Mercy and Worship, 
with a still Strength, such as the Cynic's Tub did nowise 
witness. Great, truly, was that Tub ; a temple from which 
man's dignity and divinity was scornfully preached abroad : 
but greater is the Leather Hull, for the same sermon was 
preached there, and not in Scorn but in Love." 

George Fox's " perennial suit," with all that it held, has 
been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries : why, in 
a discussion on the Perfectibility of Society^ reproduce it 
now ? Not out of blind sectarian partisanship : Teufels- 
drockh himself is no Quaker ; with all his pacific tendencies, 
did not we see him, in that scene at the North Cape, with 
the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms ? 

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more 
meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the same time, 
who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian 
simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand satire in it), 
with which that " Incident " is here brought forward ; and, 
in the Professor's ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he 
durst in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation ! Does 
Teufelsdrockh anticipate that, in this age of refinement, any 
considerable class of the community, by way of testifying* 



CIIURCIf-CL O rilES. 1 87 

against the ^' Manimon-i;od/' and escaping from what he 
calls "Vamty's Workhouse and Ragfair/' where doubtless 
some of them are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked 
sufficiently, — will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases 
of Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will 
Majesty lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and 
train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide ? By which 
change Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and 
Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar were reduced to hungry 
solitudes; and only Day and Martin could profit. For 
neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as we 
presume covertly intended, of levelling Society {levelling it 
indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh ! ), 
and so attaining the political effects of Nudity without its 
frigorific or other consequences, — be thereby realized. 
Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof suit of 
Russia Leather; and the high-born Belle step-forth in red or 
azure morocco, lined w ith shamoy : the black cowhide being 
left to the Drudges and Gibeonites of the world ; and so all 
the old Distinctions be re-established ? 

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; and laughs 
in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, which indeed are 
but a part thereof ? 

CHAPTER IL 

CHURCH-CLOTHES. 

NOT less questionable is his Chapter on Church-Clothes^ 
which has the farther distinction of being the shortest 
in the Volume. We here translate it entire : 

*' By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised that I mean 
infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices; and do not at 



1 88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday Clothes that men go 
to Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are, in our 
vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, under which men have 
at various periods embodied and represented for themselves 
the Religious Principle ; that is to say, invested the Divine 
Idea of the World with a sensible and practically active 
Body, so that it might dwell among them as a living and 
life-giving Word. 

^' These are unspeakably the most important of all the 
vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are 
first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of wonders, 
Society; for it is still only when Uwo or three are gathered 
together,' that Religion, spiritually existent, and indeed 
indestructible, however latent, in each, first outwardly 
manifests itself (as with 'cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks 
to be embodied in a visible Communion and Church Militant. 
Mystical, more than magical, is that Communing of Soul 
with Soul, both looking heavenward : here properly Soul first 
speaks with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, take it in 
what sense you may, not in looking earthw^ard, does what we 
can call Union, mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. 
How true is that of Novalis; ' It is certain, my Belief gains 
quite infiiiitely the moment I can convince another mind 
thereof ' ! Gaze thou in the face of thy Brother, in those 
eyes where plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in 
those where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger; feel 
how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily 
kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each 
other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing 
Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate); and then say what 
miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. But if so, 
through all the thick-plied hulls of our Earthly Life ; how 
much more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, and 



CHURCH-CL O THES. 1 89 

jnmost Me is, as it were, brought into contact with inmost 
Me! 

*'Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes are first 
spun and woven by Society; outward Reh'gion originates 
by Society, Society becomes possible by Rehgion. Nay, 
perhaps, every conceivable Society, past and present, may 
well be figured as properly and wholly a Church, in one or 
other of these three predicaments ; an audibly preaching and 
prophesying Church, which is the best ; second, a Church 
that struggles to preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till 
its Pentecost come; and third and worst, a Church gone 
dumb with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior 
to dissolution. Whoso fancies that L^y Church is here 
meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching and 
prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him," says the 
oracular Professor, " read on, light of heart i^gctrosten 
Mtithes), 

** But with regard to your Church proper, and the Church- 
Clothes specially recognized as Church-Clothes, I remark, 
fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures and sacred 
Tissues Society has not existed, and will not exist. For if 
Government is, so to speak, the outward Skin of the Body 
Politic, holding the whole together and protecting it ; and 
all your Craft-Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of 
hand or of head, are the Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and 
osseous Tissues (lying under such Skix), whereby Society 
stands and works; — then is Religion the inmost Pericardial 
and Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circu- 
lation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue the 
Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or animated 
only by a Galvanic vitality; the Skin would become a 
shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and Society itself 
a dead carcass, — deserving to be buried. Men were no 



igO SARTOR RESARTxTS. 

longer Social, but Gregarious ; which latter state also could 
not continue, but must gradually issue in universal selfish 
discord, hatred; savage isolation, and dispersion ; — whereby, 
as we might continue to say, the very dust and dead body 
of Society would have evaporated and become abolished. 
Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church - 
Clothes to civihzed or even to rational men. 

" Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same Church- 
Clothes have gone sorrowfully out-at-elbows : nay, far worse, 
many of them have become mere hollow Shapes, or Masks, 
under which no living Figure or Spirit any longer dwells; 
but only spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, 
drive their trade ; and the mask still glares on you with its 
glass-eyes, in ghastly affectation of Life, — some generation- 
and-half after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in 
unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, where- 
with to re-appear, and bless us, or our sons or grandsons. As 
a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and highest 
of all men, so is a Sham-priest {Schein-priester) the falsest 
and basest ; neither is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were 
they Popes' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make 
bandages for the wounds of mankind ; or even to burn into 
tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. 

** All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled in 
my Second Volume, On the Palingenesia^ or Newbirth of 
Society J which volume, as treating practically of the Wear, 
Destruction, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or Gar- 
ments, forms, properly speaking, the Transcendental or 
ultimate Portion of this my work on Clothes^ and is already 
in a state of forwardness." 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or commentary 
being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his Editor now, 
terminate the singular chapter on Church-Clothes ! 



SYMBOLS. 191 

CHAPTER III. 

SYMBOLS. 

PROBABLY it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing 
obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our 
Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state his whole 
doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass : nowhere is he 
more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of " Fantasy being 
the organ of the Godlike ; " and how "(Man thereby, thoiigh 
based, to all seeming, on the small Visible, does nevertheless 
extend down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which 
Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly the bodying forth. y 
Let us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the 
matter, study to glean (whether from the Paper-bags or 
the Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, 
and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence as 
it will assume. By way of proem, take the following not 
injudicious remarks : 

" The benignant efficacies of Concealment," cries our 
Professor, " who shall speak or sing ? Silence and 
Secrecy ! Altars might still be raised to them (were this 
an altar-building time) for universal worship. Silence is the 
element in which great things fashion themselves together; 
that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, 
into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule. 
Not William the Silent only, but all the considerable men 
I have known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic 
of these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and 
projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou 
thyself but hold thy tongite for one day : on the morrow, how 



192 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

much clearer are thy purposes and duties ; what wreck and 
rubbish have those mute workmen within thee swept away, 
when intrusive noises were shut out ! Speech is too often 
not, as the Frenchman defined it, the art of concealing 
Thought ; but of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so 
that there is none to conceal. Speech too is great, but not 
the greatest. As the Swiss inscription says : Sprechen ist 
silbern^ Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern. Silence is 
golden) ; or as I might rather express it : Speech is of 
Time, Silence is of Eternity. 

" Bees will not work except in darkness ; Thought will not 
work except in Silence : neither will Virtue work except in 
Secrecy. Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand 
doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate even to thy own heart of 
'those secrets known to all.' Is not Shame {Schaam) the 
soil of all Virtue, of all good manners and good morals? 
Like other plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be 
hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let the sun shine 
on it, nay do but look at it privily thyself, the root withers, 
and no flower will glad thee. O my Friends, when we view 
the fair clustering flowers that overwreathe, for example, the 
Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance 
and hues of Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul 
plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and with grinning, 
grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they flourish in! 
Men speak much of the Printing-Press with its Newspapers : 
du Him7nel! what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's 
Goose?" 

'' Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Concealment, 
and connected with still greater things, is the wondrous 
agency of Symbols, In a Symbol there is concealment and 
yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech 
acting together, comes a double significance. And if both 




•'IN THK SYMBOL I'KOPEK . . . SOME EMBODIMENT AND REVELATION 

OK THE LNiTNirE.'' — Page 193. 



SYMBOLS. 193 

the Speech be itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, how 
expressive will their union be ! Thus in many a painted 
Device, or simple Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands 
out to us proclaimed with quite new emphasis. 

"For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonderland 
plays into t,he small prose domain of Sense, and becomes 
incorporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, what we can 
cafl a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly and 
directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite ; the 
Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand 
visible, and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, 
accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, 
made wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed 
with Symbols, recognized as such or not recognized :\ the 
Universe is but one vast Symbol of God ; nay if thou wilt 
have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all 
that he does symbolical a revelation to Sense of the mystic 
god-given force that is in him ; a ' Gospel of Freedom,' which 
he, the ^ Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he can, by act and 
word? Not a Hut he builds but is the visible embodiment 
of a Thought ; but bears visible record of invisible things ; 
but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as 
real." 

" Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal 
contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we have 
here cut-short on the verge of the inane, " Man is by birth 
somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that 
ever possessed him, the most owlish, if we consider it, is 
that of your actually existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic 
tricks enough man has played, in his time ; has fancied 
himself to be most things, down even to an animated heap 
of Glass : but to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for 
weighing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for this his 



194 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

latter era. There stands he, his Universe one huge Manger 
filled with hay and thistles to be weighed against each other ^ 
and looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil ! spectres 
are appointed to haunt him : one age he is hagridden, 
bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all ages, 
bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism smothers 
him worse than any Nightmare did; till the Soul is nigh 
choked out of him, and only a kind of Digestive, Mechanic 
life remains. In Earth and in Heaven he can see nothing 
but Mechanism ; has fear for nothing else, hope in nothing 
else : the world would indeed grind him to pieces ; but 
cannot he fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly 
compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other 
way? 

**Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by enchant- 
ment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and look. In 
which country, in which time, was it hitherto that man's 
history, or the history of any man. went-on by calculated or 
calculable ' Motives ' 1 What make ye of your Christianities, 
and Chivalries, and Reformations, and Marseillaise Hymns, 
and Reigns of Terror? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive- 
grinder himself been in Love ? Did he never stand so much 
as a contested Election? Leave him to Time, and the 
medicating virtue of Nature." 

"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, "not 
our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative one is 
King over us ; I might say, Priest and Prophet to lead us 
heavenward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us hellward. 
Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, what is Sense but the 
implement of Fantasy; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever 
in the dullest existence there is a sheen either of Inspiration 
or of Madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of 
the two), that gleams-in from the circumam.blent Eternity, 



I 



SYMBOLS. 193 

and colors with its own hues our little islet of Time. The 
Understanding is indeed thy window, too clear thou can^t 
not make it; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its color-giving 
retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself known five- 
hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat for a piece 
of glazed Cotton, which they called their Flag ; which, had 
you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought 
above three groschen ? Did not the whole Hungarian 
Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, 
when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown; an imple- 
ment, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial 
value little differing from a horse-shoe ? It is in and through 
Syjnbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, 
works, and has his being : those ages, moreover, are 
accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbol- 
ical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not a Symbol 
ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer 
revelation of the Godlike ? 

" Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they have 
both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest the former 
only. What, for instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which 
the Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in \\\€\x Bauer n- 
krieg (Peasants' War)? Or in the Wallet-and-staff round 
which the Netherland Gueux, glorying in that nickname of 
Beggars, heroically rallied and prevailed, though against 
King Philip himself ? Intrinsic significance these had none : 
only extrinsic; as the accidental Standards of multitudes 
more or less sacredly uniting together; in which union 
itself, as above noted, there is ever something mystical and 
borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like category, too, 
stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms ; mili- 
tary Banners everywhere ; and generally all national or 
other sectarian Costumes and Customs ; they have no 



V 



196 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even worth ; but have 
acquired an extrinsic one. Nevertheless through all these 
there glimmers something of a Divine Idea; as through 
military Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of Duty, of 
heroic Daring ; in some instances of Freedom, of Right. 
Nay the highest ensign that men ever met and embraced 
under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental 
extrinsic one. ) 

" Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol has 
intrinsic meaning, and is of itself yf/ that men should unite 
round it. Let but the Godlike manifest itself to Sense ; let 
but Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the Time- 
Figure (Zeitbild) ! Then is it fit that men unite there ; and 
worship together before such Symbol ; and so from day to 
day, and from age to age, superadd to its new divineness. 

*' Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in them 
(if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) wilt 
thou discern Eternity looking through Time; the Godlike 
rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic value gradually 
superadd itself: thus certain Iliads^ and the like, have, in 
three-thousand years, attained quite new significance. But 
nobler than all in this kind are the Lives of heroic god- 
inspired Men ; for what other Work of Art is so divine 1 
In Death too, in the Death of the Just, as the last perfection 
of a Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? 
In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, resting 
over the beloved face which now knows thee no more, read 
(if thou canst for tears) the confluence of Time with Eternity, 
and some gleam of the latter peering through. 

" Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist or 
Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can recognize a 
present God, and worship the same : I mean religious 
Symbols. Various enough have been such religious Sym- 



■ VAil',''\jWtW>\Aft » 



SYMBOLS. 197 

bols, what we call Religiojis ; as men stood in this stage of 
culture or the other, and could worse or better body-forth' 
the Godlike : some Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; 
many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height 
man has carried it in this manner, look on our divinest 
Symbol : on Jesus of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biog- 
raphy, and what followed therefrom. Higher has the human 
Thought not yet reached : this is Christianity and Christen- 
dom ; a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose 
significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, and 
anew made manifest. 

" But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacredness 
of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at length defaces, 
or even desecrates them ; and Symbols, like all terrestrial 
Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos has not ceased to be 
true ; yet it is no longer our Epos, but shines in the distance, 
if clearer and clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a 
receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be 
re-interpreted and artificially brought near us, before we can 
so much as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day 
comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw 
into dimness ; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo and 
Indian Pawaw be utterly abolished. For all things, even 
Celestial Luminaries, much more atmospheric meteors, have 
their rise, their culmination, their decline." 

" Small is this which thou tellest me, that the Royal 
Sceptre is but a piece of gilt-wood ; that the Pyx has become 
a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, ^of 
little price.' A right Conjurer might I name thee, couldst 
thou conjure back into these wooden tools the divine virtue 
they once held." 

^' Of this thing, however, be certain : wouldst thou plant 
for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties of 



198 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

man, his Fantasy and Heart ; wouldst thou plant for Year 
and Day, then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, his 
Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, what will grow 
there. A Hierarch, therefore, and Pontiff of the World 
will we call him, the Poet and inspired Maker ; who, 
Prometheus-like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new 
Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too will not always 
be wanting ; neither perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the 
average of matters goes, we account him Legislator and wise 
who can so much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and 
gently remove it. 

" When, as the last English Coronation ^ was preparing," 
concludes this wonderful Professor, ^' I read in their News- 
papers that the ' Champion of England,' he who has to offer 
battle to the Universe for his new King, had brought it so 
far that he could now ' mount his horse with little assist- 
ance,' I said to myself : Here also we have a Symbol well- 
nigh superannuated. Alas, move whithersoever you may, 
are not the tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out 
Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping off every- 
where, to hoodwink, to halter, to tether you; nay, if you 
shake them not aside, threatening to accumulate, and 
perhaps produce suffocation 1 " 



CHAPTER IV. 

HELOTAGE. 

AT this point we determine on adverting shortly, or 
rather reverting, to a certain Tract of H of rath Heu^ 
schrecke's, entitled Institute for the Repression of Popula- 

I That of George IV. — Ed, 



^' 



HELOTAGE. 1 99 

Hon; which h*es, dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, and 
a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into the Bag 
Pisces. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract itself, which 
we admire little; but of the marginal Notes, evidently in 
Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather copiously fringe it. A 
few of these may be in their right place here. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute^ with its extraordinary 
schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and the 
like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for us to 
understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Malthus ; and 
so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal almost literally eats 
him up. A deadly fear of Population possesses the Hofrath ; 
something like a fixed-idea ; undoubtedly akin to the more 
diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his 
intellectual world, is there light ; nothing but a grim shadow 
of Hunger ; open mouths opening wider and wider; a world 
to terminate by the frightfullest consummation : by its too 
dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally eating 
one another. To mak eair for himself in which strangula- 
tion, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath 
founds, or proposes to found, this IiistitiUe of his, as the 
best he can do. It is only with our Professor's comments 
thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a speculative 
Radical, has his own notions about human dignity; that 
the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made him 
forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of 
Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following indistinctly 
engrossed : 

" Two men I honor, and no third. First, the toilworn 
Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously 
conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable to 

e is the hard Hand ; crooked, coarse ; wherein notwith- 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

standing lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, as of the 
Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, 
all weather-tanned, bespoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for 
it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but tlie more 
venerable for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity 
as well as love thee ! Hardly-entreated Brother ! For us 
was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs and 
fingers so deformed : thou wert our Conscript, on whom the 
lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee 
too lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded ; 
encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and 
defacements of Labor : and thy body, like thy soul, was not 
to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on : thou art in thy duty, 
be out of it who may ; thou toilest for the altogether indis- 
pensable, for daily bread. 

" A second man I honor, and still more highly : Him who 
is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable ; not daily 
bread, but the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; 
endeavoring towards inward Harmony ; revealing this, by 
act or by word, through all his outward endeavors, be they 
high or low } Highest of all, when his outward and his 
inward endeavor are one : when we can name him A^'tist ; 
not earthly Craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with 
heaven-made Implement conquers Heaven for us ! If the 
poor and humble toil that we have Food, must not the high 
and glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have 
Guidance, Freedom, Immortahty ? — These two, in all their 
degrees, I honor : all else is chaff and dust, which let the 
wind blow whither it listeth. 

" Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
both dignities united ; and he that must toil outwardly for 
the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly for the 
highest. Sublimer in this world know I nothing than a 







< 




'SUCH A ONE WILL TAKE THEE LACK TO NAZARETH ITSELF."— /'rt^^ 20I. 



HELOTAGE, 201 

Peasant Sai nt, could such now anywhere be met with 
Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself ; thou wilt 
see the splendor of Heaven spring forth from the humblest 
depths of Earth, like a light shining in great darkness.'^ 

And again : *' It is not because of his toils that I lament 
for the poor : we must all toil, or steal (howsoever we name 
our stealing), which is worse; no faithful workman finds his 
task a pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst; but for 
him also there is food and drink : he is heavy-laden and 
weary; but for him also the Heavens send Sleep, and of the 
deepest; in his smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest 
envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. 
But what I do mourn over is, that the lamp of his soul 
should go out ; that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly 
knowledge, should visit him ; but only, in the haggard 
darkness, Hke two spectres. Fear and Indignation bear 
him company. Alas, while the Body stands so broad and 
brawny, must the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost 
annihilated ! Alas, was this too a Breath of God ; bestowed 
in Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded ! — That there 
should be one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowl- 
edge, this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than 
twenty times in the minute, as by some computations it 
does. The miserable fraction of Science which our united 
Mankind, in a wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, 
why is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all ? " 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The old 
Spartans had a wiser method ; and went out and hunted- 
down their Helots, and speared and spitted them, when they 
grew too numerous. With our improved fashions of hunt- 
ing, Herr Hofrath, now after the invention of fire-arms, and 
standing-armies, how much easier were such a hunt ! 
Perhaps in the most thickly-peopled country, some three 



202 SAkTOR kESARTUS. 

days annually might suffice to shoot all the able-bodied 
Paupers that had accumulated within the year. Let Govern- 
ment think of this. The expense were trifling: nay the very 
carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and barrelled ; 
could not you victual therewith, if not Army and Navy, yet 
richly such infirm Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as 
enlightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, might see 
good to keep ahve 1 " 

^* And yet," writes he farther on, ^' there must be something 
wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, bring from 
twenty to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or : such is 
his worth to the world. A full-formed Man is not only worth 
nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a round 
sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself. 
Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cunningly- 
devised article, even as an Engine 1 Good Heavens ! A 
white European Man, standing on his tWo Legs, with his 
two five-fingered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous 
Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from fifty 
to a hundred Horses ! " 

^' True, thou Gold-Hofrath," cries the Professor else- 
where : *' too crowded iQdeed ! Meanwhile, what portion of 
this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye actually 
tilled and delved, till it will grow no more '^. How thick 
stands your Population in the Pampas and Savannas of 
America ; round ancient Carthage, and in the interior of 
Africa; on both slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central 
Platform of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, 
the Curragh of Kildare ? One man, in one year, as I have 
understood it, if you lend him Earth, will feed himself and 
nine others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics 
of our still-glowing, still-expanding Europe; who, when their 
home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, 



THE PHQLNIX. 203 

guide onwards those superfluous masses of indomitable 
living Valor; equipped, not now with the battle-axe and 
war-chariot, but with the steam-engine and ploughshare ? 
Where are they ? — Preserving their Game ! " 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PHCENIX. 

PUTTING which four singular Chapters together, and 
alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct 
utterances, scattered over these Writings of his, we come 
upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that 
Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, properly 
so called, to be as good as extinct; and that only the 
gregarious feehngs, and old inherited habitudes, at this 
juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and universal national, 
civil, domestic and personal war ! He says expressly : " For 
the last three centuries, above all for the last three quarters 
of a century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue (as we 
named it) of Religion, where lies the Life-essence of Society, 
has been smote-at and perforated, needfully and needlessly ; 
till now it is quite rent into shreds ; and Society, long 
pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct ; 
for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life ; neither 
indeed will they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond two 
days." 

"Call ye that a Society," cries he again, "where there is 
no longer any Social Idea extant ; not so much as the Idea 
of a common Home, but only of a common over-crowded 
Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regardless of his 
neighbor, turned against his neighbor, clutches what he can 



204 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

get, and cries ^Mine!' and calls it Peace, because, in 'rlie 
cut-purse and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only 
a far cunninger sort, can be employed? Where Friendship, 
Communion, has become an incredible tradition ; and your 
holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern Dinner, 
with Cook for Evangelist? Where your Priest has no 
tongue but for plate-licking: and your high Guides and 
Governors cannot guide ; but on all hands hear it passion- 
ately proclaimed: Lais sez fair e j Leave us alone oi yoicr 
guidance, such light is darker than darkness ; eat you your 
wages, and sleep ! 

''Thus, too," continues he, "does an observant eye 
discern everywhere that saddest spectacle : The Poor 
perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of 
Hunger and Overwork ; the Rich, still more wretchedly, 
of Idleness, Satiety, and Over-growth. The Highest in 
rank, at length, without honor from the Lowest ; scarcely, 
with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern-waiters who 
expect to put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols flutter- 
ing as empty Pageants, whereof men grudge even the 
expense; a World becoming dismantled: in one word, 
the Church fallen speechless, from obesity and apoplexy ; 
the State shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened to get 
its pay ! " 

We might ask, are there many "observant eyes," belong- 
ing to practical men in England or elsewhere, which have 
descried these phenomena; or is it only from the mystic 
elevation of a German Wahngasse that such wonders are 
visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the aspect of a 
" deceased or expiring Society " fronts us everywhere, so 
that whoso runs may read. " What, for example," says he, 
"is the universally-arrogated Virtue, almost the sole remain- 
ing Catholic Virtue, of these days ? For some half century, 



THE PHCENIX, 205 

it has been the thing you name ' Independence.' Suspicion 
of * Servility,' of reverence for Superiors, the very dogleech 
is anxious to disavow. Fools ! Were your Superiors 
worthy to govern, and you worthy to obey, reverence for 
them were even your only possible freedom. Independence, 
in all kinds, is rebellion ; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, 
and everywhere prescribe it 1 " 

But what then 1 Are we returning, as Rousseau prayed, 
to the state of Nature ? " The Soul Politic having departed," 
says Teufelsdrockh, " what can follow but that the Body 
Politic be decently interred, to avoid putrescence ? Liberals, 
Economists, Utilitarians enough I see marching with its 
bier, and chanting loud paeans, towards the funeral-pile, 
where, amid wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries 
from the most, the venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in 
plain words, that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or what- 
soever they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and 
dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of Society, 
seems a thing which has some time ago ceased to be 
doubtful. 

** Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utilita- 
rian Armament come to light even in insulated England ? 
A living nucleus^ that will attract and grow, does at length 
appear there also ; and under curious .phasis ; properly as 
the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the 
others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechan- 
izers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-oper- 
ative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places 
of Thought, here among ourselves, and in every European 
country, at some time or other, within the last fifty years '^. 
If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has 
ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, and 
^unk to Journalists and the popular mass, — who sees not 



206 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the reason is, it 
now needs no Preaching, but is in full universal Action, the 
doctrine everywhere known, and enthusiastically laid to 
heart ? The fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain 
rugged workshop intellect and heart, nowise without their 
corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, it requires 
but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes enough. 

— Admirably calculated for destroying, only not for rebuild- 
ing! It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness ; till the whole 
World-kennel will be rabid : then woe to the Huntsmen, 
with or without their whips ! They should have given the 
quadrupeds water," adds he; "the water, namely, of Knowl- 
edge and of Life, while it was yet time.'^ 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we 
are at this hour in a most critical condition ; beleaguered by 
that boundless " Armament of Mechanizers " and Unbeliev- 
ers, threatening to strip us bare ! " The World," says he, 
''as it needs must, is under a process of devastation and 
waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, or open 
quicker combustion, as the case chances, will effectually 
enough annihilate the past P'orms of Society ; replace them 
with what it may. For the present, it is contemplated that 
when man's whole Spiritual Interests are once divested^ these 
innumerable stript-off Garments shall mostly be burnt ; but 
the sounder Rags among them be quilted together into one 
huge Irish watch-coat for the defence of the Body only ! " 

— This, we think, is but Job's-news to the humane reader. 
"Nevertheless,'' cries Teufelsdrockh, "who can hinder 

it; who is there that can clutch into the wheelspokes of 
Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time : Turn back, I 
command thee? — Wiser were it that we yielded to the 
Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even this the 
best." 



THE PHCENIX. 20/ 

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own 
inferences from what stands written, conjecture that 
Teufelsdrockh individually had yielded to this same " Inevi- 
table and Inexorable '* heartily enough ; and now sat waiting 
the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical Indifference, if 
not even Placidity? Did we not hear him complain that the 
World was a "huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of 
old Symbols " were raining-down everywhere, like to drift 
him in, and suffocate him? What with those "unhunted 
Helots '' of his ; and the uneven sic vos non vobis pressure 
and hard-crashing collision he is pleased to discern in exist- 
ing things ; what with the so hateful " empty Masks,'' full 
of beetles and spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their 
glass eyes, "with a ghastly affectation of life,'' — we feel 
entitled to conclude him even willing that much should be 
thrown to the Devil, so it were but done gently! Safe him- 
self in that " Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he w^ould consent, 
with a tragic solemnity, that the monster Utilitaria, held 
back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, foot- 
shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, should 
go forth to do her work ; — to tread down old ruinous Palaces 
and Temples with her broad hoof, till the whole were 
trodden down, that new and better might be built ! 
Remarkable in this point of view are the following 
sentences. 

" Society,'' says he, " is not dead : that Carcass, which you 
call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she has shuffled 
off, to assume a nobler; she herself, through perpetual meta 
morphoses, in fairer and fairer development, has to live till 
Time also merge in Eternity. Wheresoever two or three 
Living Men are gathered together, there is Society; or there 
it will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stupendous struc- 
tures, overspreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna : for always, under 
one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revelations, of 
a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, namely, and the Gallows." 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of " Religion, in un- 
noticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ; " — Teufels- 
drockh himself being one of the loom-treadles ? Elsewhere 
he quotes without censure that strange aphorism of Saint- 
Simon's, concerning which and whom so much were to be 
said: '•'■L'dge d'or^ qvJune aveugle tradition a place jusquHci 
dans le passe\ est devant nous ; The golden age, which a 
bhnd tradition has hitherto placed in the Past, is Before us." 
— But listen again: 

" When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will 
there not be sparks flying ! Alas, some millions of men, and 
among them such as a Napoleon, have already been licked 
into that high-eddying Flame, and like moths consumed 
there. Still also have we to fear that incautious beards will 
get singed. 

" For the rest, in what year of grace such Phcenix-cremation 
will be completed, you need not ask. The law of Persever- 
ance is among the deepest in man : by nature he hates change ; 
seldom will he quit his old house till it has actually fallen 
about his ears. Thus have I seen Solemnities linger as 
Ceremonies, sacred Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent 
of three-hundred years and more after all life and sacredness 
had evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time 
the Phoenix Death-Birth itself . will require, depends on 
unseen contingencies. — Meanwhile, would Destiny offer 
Mankind, that after, say two centuries of convulsion and 
conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation should be 
accomplished, and we to find ourselves again in a Living 
Society, and no longer fighting but working, — were it not 
perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the bargain?'' 




I WOCI.D BOW TO KVERY MAN WITH ANY SORT OF HAT."— /'^^^ 210. 



OLD CLOTHES, 2O9 

Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society 
should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other fuel than 
spice-wood) ; in the faith that she is a Phcepix ; and that a 
new heavenborn young one will rise out of her ashes ! We 
ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, shall forbear 
commentary. Meanwhile, will not the judicious reader 
shake his head, and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than 
in anger, say or think: From a Doctor utriusqiie Juris, 
titular Professor in a University, and man to whom hitherto, 
for his services. Society, bad as she is, has given not only 
food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco and gukguk, 
we expected more gratitude to his benefactress ; and less 
of a blind trust in the future, which resembles that rather of 
a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid 
householder paying scot-and-lot in a Christian country. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OLD CLOTHES. 

AS mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a sanscu- 
lottist, is in practice probably the politest man extant: 
his whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with 
the spirit of politeness ; a noble natural Courtesy shines 
through him, beautifying his vagaries ; like sun-light, making 
a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous 
clouds ; nay brightening London-smoke itself into gold 
vapor, as from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what 
earnest though fantastic wise he expresses himself on this 
head : 

" Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by the 
rich ? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, from High- 



^ 



210 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

breeding, only as it gracefully remembers the rights ot 
others, rather than gracefully insists on its own rights, I 
discern no special connection with wealth or birth : but 
rather that it lies in human nature itself, and is due from all 
men towards all men. Of a truth, were your Schoolmaster 
at his post, and worth any thing when there, this, with so 
much else, would be reformed. Nay, each man were then 
also his neighbor's schoolmaster ; till at length a rude- 
visaged, unmannered Peasant could no more be met with, 
than a Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or 
who felt not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. 

" For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, 
art not thou alive ; is not this thy brother alive } ' There 
is but one temple in the world,' says Novalis, *and that 
temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this 
high Form. Bending before men is a reverence done to 
this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we 
lay our hands on a human Body.' 

" On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than most 
do; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed to- every 
Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to every 
Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat whatever. Is not 
he a Temple, then ; the visible Manifestation and Imperson- 
ation of the Divinity 1 And yet, alas, such indiscriminate 
bowing serves not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as 
w^ell as a Divinity ; and too often the bow is but pocketed 
by thQ former. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which 
is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times); there- 
fore must we withhold it. 

" The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence to 
those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein no devil- 
ish passion any longer lodges, but only the pure emblem 
and effigies of man : I me9,n, to Empty, or even to Cast 



OLD CLOTHES. 211 

Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that most men do 
reverence : to the fine frogged broadcloth, nowise to the 
* straddling animal with bandy legs' which it holds, and 
makes a Dignitary of ? Who ever saw any Lord my-lorded 
in tattered blanket fastened with wooden skewer? Never- 
theless, I say, there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, 
a practical deception : for how often does the Body appro- 
priate what was meant for the Cloth only ! Whoso would 
avoid falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will perhaps 
see good to take a different course. That reverence which 
cannot act without obstruction and perversion when the 
Clothes are full, may have free course when they are empty. 
Even as, for Hindoo Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less 
sacred than the God ; so do I too worship the hollow cloth 
Garment with equal fervor, as when it contained the Man : 
nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself or of 
others. 

" Did not King Toomlabard, or, in other words, John 
Baliol, reign long over Scotland ; the man John Baliol being 
quite gone, and only the * Toom Tabard ' (Empty Gown) 
remaining ? What still dignity dwells in a suit of Cast 
Clothes ! How meekly it bears its honors ! No haughty 
looks, no scornful gesture : silent and serene, it fronts the 
world; neither demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. 
The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its Head : but 
the vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was 
the sign of these two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched 
out, but not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, 
depend at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow; the 
Waistcoat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire ; hunger 
or thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the 
grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of 
the World • ^nd rides there, ou its Clothes-horse ; as, on ^ 



212 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, or purified Appari* 
tion, visiting our low Earth. 

*' Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tuberosity of 
Civilized Life, the Capital of England ; and meditated, and 
questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapor, black, 
thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth ; and was one lone 
soul amid those grinding millions; — often have I turned 
into their Old-Clothes Market to worship. With awe-struck 
heart I walk through that Monmouth Street, with its empty 
Suits, as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent 
are they, but expressive in their silence : the past witnesses 
and instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, 
Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 
* the Prison men call life.' Friends ! trust not the heart of 
that man for whom Old Clothes are not venerable. Watch, 
too, with reverence, that bearded Jewish High-priest, who 
with hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, summons them 
from the four winds ! On his head, like the Pope, he has 
diree Hats, — a real triple tiara; on either hand are the 
similitude of wings, whereon the summoned Garments come 
to alight ; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds 
forth his deep fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were 
proclaiming : ' Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment ! ' Reck 
not, ye fluttering Ghosts : he will purify you in his Purgator}^ 
with fire and with water ; and, one day, new-created ye shall 
re-appear. O, let him in whom the flame of Devotion is 
ready to go out, who has never worshipped, and knows not 
vvdiat to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought, 
the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether his 
heart and his eyes still continue dry. * If Field Lane, with its 
long fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' 
Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the Indictment 
which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it 



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♦what STII-L DIGNITY DWELLS IN A SUIT OF CAST CLOTHES."— /'^^^ 211. 



OLD CLOTHES. 213 

has left them there cast-out and trodden under foot of Want, 
Darkness and the Devil, — then is Monmouth Street a 
Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole Pageant of 
Existence passes awfully before us ; with its wail and jubilee, 
mad loves and mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, 
farce-tragedy, beast-godhood, — the Bedlam of Creation! " 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem 
overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth 
Street; but with little feeling of " Devotion :" probably in 
part because the contemplative process is so fatally broken 
in upon by the brood of money-changers who nestle in that 
Church, and importune the w^orshipper with merely secular 
proposals. Whereas Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy 
middle state, which leaves to the Clothes-broker no hope 
either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed to linger 
there without molestation. — Something we would have 
given to see the little philosophical figure, with its steeple- 
hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in a fine frenzy, 
"pacing and repacing in austerest thought" that foolish 
Street ; w^hich to him was a true Delphic avenue, and super- 
natural Whispering-gallery, where the " Ghosts of Life " 
rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou philosophic 
Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while others only gabble, and 
with thy quick tympanum hearest the grass grow ! 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paper-bag 
Documents destined for an English work, there exists 
nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in 
London ; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shopi» 
only the obscurest emblematic shadows ? Neither in convet 
sation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you with h\ , 
Travels), have we heard him more than allude to tl.e 
subject. 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that we 
here find how early the significance of Clothes had dawned 
on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. Might we 
but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth Street, at the 
bottom of our own English ^' ink-sea," that this remarkable 
Volume first took being, and shot forth its salient point in 
his soul, — as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, one day to be 
hatched into a Universe ! 



CHAPTER VII. 

ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 

FOR us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is 
burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as T^ufels- 
drockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would she 
engage to have done " wnthin two centuries," there seems to 
lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, however, does 
the Professor figure it. *' In the living subject," says he, 
" change is wont to be gradual : thus, while the serpent sheds 
its old skin, the new is already formed beneath. Little 
knowest thou of the burning of a World Phoenix, who fanciest 
that she must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cinereous 
heap; and therefrom the young one start-up by miracle, and 
fly heavenward. Far otherwise ! In that Fire-whirlwind, 
Creation and Destruction proceed together; ever as the 
ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments of 
the New mysteriously spin themselves : and amid the 
rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-element come 
tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not but in tones 
of a more melodious Rirthsong. Nay, look into the Fire- 
whirlwind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." Let us 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS, 21$ 

actually look, then ; to poor individuals, who cannot expect 
to live two centuries, those same organic filaments, mysteri- 
ously spinning themselves, will be the best part of the 
spectacle. First, therefore, this of Mankind in general : 

'■ In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art 
my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, those foolish 
Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic humor : what is all 
this but an inverted Sympathy? Were I a Steam-engine, 
wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of me ? Not thou ! 
I should grind all unheeded, whether badly or well. 

" Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and all ; 
whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chaining of 
Necessity, as we like to choose it. More than once have I 
said to myself, of some perhaps whimsically strutting Figure, 
such as provokes whimsical thoughts : ' Wert thou, my little 
Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within the largest imagin- 
able Glass-bell, — what a thing it were, not for thyself only, 
but for the world ! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all 
the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but have to 
drop unread : neither from within comes there question or 
response into any Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into no 
friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchasing 
hand : thou art no longer a circulating venous-arterial Heart, 
that, taking and giving, circulatest through all Space and all 
Time : there has a Hole fallen-out in the immeasurable, 
universal World-tissue, which must be darned-up again ! ' 

*' Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal Mes- 
sages, paper and other Packages, going out from him and 
coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to the eye : but 
the finer nervous circulation, by which all things, the minut- 
est that he does, minutely influence all men, and the very 
look of his face blesses or curses whomso it Hghts on, and 
so generates ever new blessing or new cursing: all this you 




2l6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

cannot see, but only imagine. I say, there is not a red 
Indian, hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, 
but the whole world must smart for it : will not the price 
of beaver rise ? It is a mathematical fact that the castingf of 
this pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of the 
Universe. 

" If now an existing generation of men stand so woven to- 
gether, not less indissolubly does generation with generation. 
Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tradition : how we 
inherit not Life only, but all the garniture and form, of Life ; 
and work, and speak, and even think and feel, as our 
Fathers, and primeval grandfathers, from the beginning, 
have given it us ? Who printed thee, for example, this 
unpretending Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes? Not 
the Herren Stillschweigen and Company ; but Cadmus of 
Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou 
knowest not. Had there been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there 
had been no English Shakspeare, or a different one. Sim- 
pleton ! it was Tubalcain that made thy very Tailor's needle, 
and sewed that court-suit of thine. 

" Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible whole, 
much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects and creates 
Nature, without which Nature were not. As palpable life- 
streams in that wondrous Individual Mankind, among so 
many life-streams that are not palpable, flow on those main- 
currents of what we call Opinion; as preserved in Institu- 
tions, Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beautiful it is 
to understand and know that a Thought did never yet die ; 
that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered it and 
created it from the whole Past, so thou will transmit it to the 
whole Future. It is thus that the heroic heart, the seeing 
eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us of the latest ; 
that the Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spiritually 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 21 7 

embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and brothers ; and there 
is a living, literal Conujiuuiou of Saints^ wide as the World 
itself, and as the History of the World. 

'^ Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress of this 
same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into Genera- 
tions. Generations are as the Days of toilsome Mankind : 
Death and Birth are the vesper and the matin bells, that 
summon Mankind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new 
advancement. What the Father has made, the Son can 
make and enjoy ; but has also work of his own appointed 
him. Thus all things wax, and roll onwards ; Arts, Estab- 
lishments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but ever com- 
pleting. Newton has learned to see what Kepler saw ; but 
there is also a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton ; he 
must mount to still higher points of vision. So too the 
Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an Apostle of 
the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, as this also is 
from time to time a necessary work, thou findest a like 
sequence and perseverance : for Luther it was as yet hot 
enough to stand by that burning of the Pope's Bull ; Voltaire 
could not warm himself at the glimmering ashes, but required 
quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig 
has, in the second generation, become an English Radical ; 
who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, will become an 
English Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, thou 
findest it in living movement, in progress faster or slower : 
the Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, 
filling Earth with her music ; or, as now, she sinks, and with 
spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, that she may 
soar the higher and sing the clearer." 

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous period, 
lay this to heart, and derive from it any little comfort they 
can. We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles : 



2l8 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

" Remark, not without surprise," says Teufelsdrockh, 
"bow all high Titles of Honor come hitherto from Fighting. 
Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader of Armies ; your Earl 
ijfarl) is Strong Man ; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. 
A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom, having from 
of old been prophesied, and becoming now daily more and 
more indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such 
Fighting-titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher 
need to be devised ? 

*' The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace eternity, 
is that of King. Konig (King), anciently Konning, means 
Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the same thing, Can-ning. 
Ever must the Sovereign of Mankind be fitly entitled 
King." 

"Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it written by Theo- 
logians : a King rules by divine right. He carries in him an 
authority from God, or man will never give it him. Can I 
choose my own King? I can choose my own King Popin- 
jay, and play what farce or tragedy I may with him : but he 
who is to be my Ruler, whose will is to be higher than my 
will, was chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in such 
Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as 
conceivable." 

The Editor will here admit that, among all the wondrous 
provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world there is none he 
walks in with such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, 
as in the Political. How, with our English love of Ministry 
and Opposition, and that generous conflict of Parties, mind 
warming itself against mind in their mutual wrestle for the 
Pubhc Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable 
Constitution kept warm and alive ; how shall we domesticate 
ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of 



ORGANIC FILAMEMTS, 2ig 

the Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present seems 
little other than an inconsiderable Film dividing the Past 
and the Future? In those dim longdrawn expanses, all is 
so immeasurable ; much so disastrous, ghastly ; your very 
radiances and straggling light-beams have a supernatural 
character. And then with such an indifference, such a 
prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably coming as 
already here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries 
or only by days), does he sit ; — and live, you would say, 
rather in any other age than in his own ! It is our painful 
duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking into this man, 
we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, inextinguishable 
Radicalism, such as fills us with shuddering admiration. 

Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of the 
Elective Franchise; at least so we interpret the following: 
" Satisfy yourselves," he says, " by universal, indubitable 
experiment, even as ye are now doing or will do, whether 
Freedom, heavenborn and leading heavenward, and so 
vitally essential for us all, cannot peradventure be mechan- 
ically hatched and brought to light in that same Ballot-Box 
of yours ; or at worst, in some other discoverable or devisable 
Box, Edifice, or Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty con- 
venience ; and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed 
hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the British 
Constitution, even slightly ? — He says, under another figure : 
" But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now everywhere 
is. To rebuild your old House from the top downwards (since 
you must live in it the while), what better, what other, than 
the Representative Machine will serve your turn? Mean- 
while, however, mock me not with the name of Free, ' when 
you have but knit-up my chains into ornamental festoons.' " 
— Or what will any member of the Peace Society make of 
such an assertion as this : ^' The lower people everywhere 



y 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

desire War. Not so unwisely; there is then a demand ioy 
lower people — to be shot ! " 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-confiising 
labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into somewhat clearer 
regions. Here, looking round, as was our hest, for " organic 
filaments," we ask, may not this, touching " Hero-worship," 
be of the number? It seems of a cheerful character; yet 
so quaint, so mystical, one knows not what, or how little, 
may lie under it. Our readers shall look with their own 
eyes : 

^' True is it that, in these days, man can do almost all 
things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso cannot 
obey cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he that is the 
inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal 
of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that man has lost his 
faculty of Reverence ; that if it slumber in him, it has gone 
dead. Painful for man is that same rebellious Independence, 
when it has become inevitable ; only in loving companion- 
ship with his fellows does he feel safe ; only in reverently 
bowing down before the Higher does he feel himself exalted. 

" Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay 
even in this : that man had forever cast away Fear, which 
is the lower; but not yet risen into perennial Reverence, 
which is the higher and highest ? 

" Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has Nature 
ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot 
but obey. Before no faintest revelation of the Godlike did 
he ever stand irreverent ; least of all, when the Godlike 
showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. Thus is there a 
true religious Loyalty forever rooted in his heart ; nay in all 
ages, even in ours, it manifests itself as a more or less 
orthodox Hei^o-worship. In which fact, that Hero-worship 
exists, has existed, and will forever exist, universally among 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 221 

Alankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living- 
rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest time may stand 
secure." 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so 
much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at ? He exclaims, 
^•Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the 
aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and 
millinery Court-po:^t, yet because even he seemed the 
Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so 
that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of 
France would have laid their hair beneath his feet ! All 
Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship ; though their 
Divinity, moreover, was of feature too apish. 

*' But if such things," continues he, "were done in the 
dry tree, what will be done in the green ? If, in the most 
parched season of Man's History, in the most parched spot 
of Europe, when Parisian life was at best but a scientific 
Hortus Sicctis, bedizened with some Italian Gumflowers, 
such virtue could come out of it ; what is to be looked for 
when Life again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero- 
Divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be wholly human ? 
Know that there is in man a quite indestructible. Reverence 
for whatsoever holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counter- 
feits such holding. Show the dullest clodpole, show the 
haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is 
actually here ; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must 
down and worship." 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteriously 
spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover in the 
following passage : 

*' There is no Church, sayest thou? The voice of 
Prophecy has gone dumb ? This is even what I dispute : 
but in any case, hast thou not still Preaching enough ? A 



^ 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Preaching Friar settles himself in every village ; and builds 
a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. Therefrom he preaches 
what most momentous doctrine is in him, for man's salva- 
tion ; and does not thou listen, and believe ? Look well, 
thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the Mendicant 
Orders, some bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion 
itself into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, 
for copper alms and the love of God. These break in 
pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too often 
reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark out the 
sites of new Churches, where the true God-ordained, that 
are to follow, may find audience, and minister. Said I not. 
Before the old skin was shed, the new had formed itself 
beneath it ? " 

Perhaps also in the following ; wherewith we now hasten 
to knit-up this ravelled sleeve : 

" But there is no Religion ? " reiterates the Professor. 
" Fool ! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered all 
that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name Litera- 
ture ? Fragments of a genuine Chnrch-Hojniletic lie scat- 
tered there, which Time will assort : nay fractions even of a 
Liturgy could I point out. And knowest thou no Prophet, 
even in the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age ? 
None to whom the Godlike had revealed itself, through all 
meanest and highest forms of the Common ; and by him 
been again prophetically revealed : in whose inspired 
melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, 
Man's Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine? 
Knowest thou none such ? I know him, and name him — 
Goethe. 

" But thou as yet standest in no Temple ; joinest in no 
Psalm-worship; feelest well that, where there is no minis- 
tering Priest, the people perish ? Be of cprpfprt ! Thoi, 



NATURAL SUFERNATURALISM, 223 

art not alone, it thou have Faith. Spake we not of a Com- 
munion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, accompanying and 
brother-like embracing thee, so thou be worthy? Their 
heroic Sufferings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, 
out of all lands, and out of all times, as a sacred Miserej^e ; 
their heroic Actions also, as a boundless everlasting Psalm 
of Triumph. Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol of 
the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the God- 
like ; is not Immensity a Temple ; is not Man's History, 
and Men's History, a perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for 
organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning 
Stars sing together." 

CHAPTER VIII. 

NATURAL SUFERNATURALISM. 

IT is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Super- 
naturalism^ that the Professor first becomes a Seer ; and, 
after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally subdues 
under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and takes 
victorious possession thereof. Phantasms enough he has 
had to struggle with ; " Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of 
Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what not : 
yet still did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of 
all, two quite mysterious, world-embracing Phantasms, Time 
and Space, have ever hovered round him, perplexing and 
bewildering: but with these also he now resolutely grapples, 
these also he victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has 
looked fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its 
earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted away ; and now, 
to his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies 
disclosed. 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of 
Clothes attains to Transcendentalism ; this last leap, can we 
but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, where 
Palingetiesia^ in all senses, may be considered as beginning. 
'•' Courage, then ! " may our Diogenes exclaim, with better 
right than Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous 
Section we, after long painful meditation, have found not to 
be unintelligible ; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay 
radiant, and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it 
what utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his 
part ; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall 
study to do ours : 

^' Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles," 
thus quietly begins the Professor ; " far deeper perhaps than 
we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of questions were : 
What specially is a Miracle ? To that Dutch King of Siam, 
an icicle had been a miracle ; whoso had carried with him 
an air-pump, and vial of vitriolic ether, might have worked 
a miracle. To my Horse, again, who unhappily is still more 
unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical * Open 
Sesame I '' ^N^x'jWm^ I please to pay twopence, and open 
for him an impassable Schlagbau7n^ or shut Turnpike ? 

" ' But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the Laws 
of Nature ? ' ask several. Whom I answer by this new 
question : What are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps 
the rising of one from the dead were no violation of these 
Laws, but a confirmation ; were some far deeper Law, now 
first penetrated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as the rest 
have all been, brought to bear on us with its Material Force. 

" Here too may some inquire, not without astonishment : 
On what ground shall one, that can make Iron sv/im, come 
and declare that therefore he can teach Rehgion .^ To us, 
truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such declaration were inept 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM, 22$ 

enough ; which nevertheless to our fathers, of the first 
Century, was full of meaning. 

^' * But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she be con- 
stant?' cries an illuminated class: * Is not the Machine of 
the Universe fixed to move by unalterable rules ? ' Probable 
enough, good friends : nay I, too, must believe that the God, 
whom ancient inspired men assert to be ' without variable- 
ness or shadow of turning,* does indeed never change ; that 
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases 
can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move by the 
most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make the 
old inquiry : What those same unalterable rules, forming 
the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may possibly be ? 

^' They stand written in our Works of Science, say you ; in 
the accumulated records of Man's Experience? — Was Man 
with his Experience present at the Creation, then, to see how 
it all went on ? Have any deepest scientific individuals yet 
dived down to the foundations of the Universe, and gauged 
every thing there ? Did the Maker take them into His coun- 
sel ; that they read His groundplan of the incomprehensible 
All ; and can say. This stands marked therein, and no more 
than this? Alas, not in anywise! These scientific individ- 
uals have been nowhere but where we also are ; have seen 
some handbreadths deeper than we see into the Deep that is 
infinite, without bottom as without shore. 

" Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits that 
certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round our worthy 
Sun, at a rate and m a course, which, by greatest good fortune, 
he and the like of him have succeeded in detecting, — 
is to me as precious as to another. But is this what thou 
namest ' Mechanism of the Heavens,' and ' System of the 
World;' this, wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Her- 
schel's Fifteen-thousand Suns per minute, being left out, 



1 



226 ' SARTOR RESARTUS. 

soijie paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been — 
looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill ; 
so that we can now prate of their Whereabout ; their How, 
their Why, their What, being hid from us, as in the signless 
Inane ? 

*' System of Nature ! To the wisest man, wide as is his 
vision. Nature remains of quite infuiite depth, of quite infi- 
nite expansion ; and all Experience thereof limits itself to 
some few computed centuries and measured square-miles. 
The course of Nature's phases, on this our little fraction of 
a Planet, is partially known to us : but who knows what 
deeper courses these depend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle 
(of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on ? To the Minnow 
every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its 
little native Creek may have become familiar : but does the 
Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic Currents, 
the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses ; by 
all which the condition of its little Creek is regulated, and 
may, from time to time (///nniraculously enough), be quite 
overset and reversed ? Such a minnow is Man ; his Creek 
this Planet Earth; his Ocean the immeasurable All; his 
Monsoons and periodic Currents the mysterious Course of 
Providence through ^ons of ^Eons. 

*' We speak of the Volume of Nature : and truly a Volume 
it is, — whose Author and Writer is God. To read it ! Dost 
thou, does man, so much as well know the Alphabet thereof? 
With its Words, Sentences, and grand descriptive Pages, 
poetical and philosophical, spread out through Solar Systems, 
and Thousands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a. 
Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred- 
writing ; of which even Prophets are happy that they can 
read here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and 
Academies of Science, they itrive bravely ; and, from amid 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 22/ 

the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hieroglyphic 
writing, pick out, by dextrous combination, some Letters 
in the vulgar Character, and therefrom put together this and 
the other economic Recipe, of high avail in Practice. That 
Nature is more than some boundless Volume of such 
Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery 
Book, of which the whole secret will in this manner one day 
evolve itself, the fewest dream. 

'' Custom," continues the Professor, " doth make dotards 
of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom is the 
greatest of Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the 
Spirits of the Universe ; whereby indeed these dwell with us 
visibly, as ministering servants, in our houses and work- 
shops ; but their spiritual nature becomes, to the most, 
forever hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom has 
hoodwinked us, from the first ; that we do every thing by 
Custom, even Believe by it ; that our very Axioms, let us 
boast of Free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such 
Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what 
is Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against 
Custom; an ever renewed effort to transcend the sphere of 
blind Custom, and so become Transcendental ? 

'•Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of 
Custom : but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack 
of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, 
ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by this means we 
live ; for man must work as well as wonder : and herein is 
Custom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. 
But she is a fond foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish 
nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we 
prolong the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous 
with stupid indifference, because I have seen" it twice, or 



228 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

two-hundred, or two-million times ? There is no reason in 
Nature or in Art why I should : unless, indeed, I am a mere 
Work-Machine, for whom the divine gift of Thought were 
no other than the terrestrial gift of Steam is to the Steam- 
engine ; a power whereby cotton might be spun, and money 
and money's worth realized. 

*' Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou find the 
potency of Names ; which indeed are but one kind of such 
custom-woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, and 
all manner of Spectre-work, and Demonology, we have now 
named Madness, and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom 
reflecting that still the new question comes upon us : What 
is Madness, what are Nerves ? Ever, as before, does 
Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal 
boiHng-up. of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair- 
painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we 
name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a 
Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or 
without it ? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world 
of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Empire; out of 
which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has been creatively 
built together, and now rests there, as on its dark founda- 
tions does a habitable flowery Earth-rind. 

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding 
Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand funda- 
mental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. 
These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, 
to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and yet to 
blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or 
warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm 
Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain, while here 
\Xi Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off; you can, 



NATURAL SUPERNATUKALISM. 229 

at best, but rend them asunder for moments, and look 
through. 

*' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put on, 
and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was There. By 
this means had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had 
annihilated Space; for him there was no Where, but all was 
Here. Were a Hatter to establish liimself, in the Wahn* 
£:asse of Weissnichtwo, and make felts of this sort for all 
mankind, what a world we should have of it ! Still stranger, 
should, on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter 
establish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made Space- 
annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both would 
I purchase, were it with my last groschen; but chiefly of this 
latter. To clap-on your felt, and, simply by wishing that you 
were Anywhere^ straightway to be There! Next to clap-on 
your other felt, and, simply by wn'shing that you were Any 
when, straightway to be Then! This w^ere indeed the 
grander: shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of the 
World to its Fire-Consummation; here historically present 
in the First Century, conversing face to face with Paul and 
Seneca; there prophetically in the Thirty-first, conversing 
also face to face with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet 
stand hidden in the deptli of that late Time ! 

'' Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimaginable? Is 
the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the Future non 
extant, or only future ? Those mystic faculties of thine, 
Memory and Hope, already answer: already through those 
mystic avenues, thou the Earth-blinded summonest both 
Past and Future, and communest with them, though as yet 
darkly, and with mute beckonings. The curtains of Yester- 
day drop down, the curtains of Tomorrow roll up ; but 
Yesterday and Tomorrow both are. Pierce through the 
Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou 



230 SARTOI^ J^ESARTUS. 

findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as 
all Thinicers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there : that 
Time and Space are not God, but creations of God ; that 
with God as it is a universal Here, so is it an everlasting 
Now. 

" And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immortality ? 
— O Heaven ! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, who 
died from our arms, and had to be left behind us there, 
which rises in the distance, like a pale, mournfully receding 
Milestone, to tell how many toilsome uncheered miles we 
have journeyed on alone, — but a pale spectral Illusion! 
Is the lost Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are 
Here mysteriously, with God ! — Know of a truth that only 
the Time-shadows have perished, or are perishable ; that the 
real Being of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever 
will be, is even now and forever. This, should it unhappily 
seem new, thou mayest ponder at thy leisure ; for the next 
twenty years, or the next twenty centuries : believe it thou 
must ; understand it thou canst not. 

*' That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, 
once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should 
condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, 
conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, seems altogether 
fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they should, further 
more, usurp such sway over pure spiritual Meditation, and 
blind us to the wonder everywhere lying close on us, seems 
nowise so. Admit Space and Time to their due rank as 
Forms of Thought ; nay even, if thou wilt, to their quite 
undue rank of Reahties : and consider, then, with thyself 
how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God- 
effulgences ! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch 
forth my hand and clutch the Sun ? Yet thou seest me 
daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM, 23 I 

thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown 
baby, then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles of distance, 
or in pounds avoirdupois of weight ; and not to see that the 
true inexplicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can 
stretch forth my hand at all ; that I have free Force to clutch 
aught therewith ? Innumerable other of this sort are the 
deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which Space 
practises on us. 

" Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand anti- 
magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same lying 
Time. Had we but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on 
for once only, we should see ourselves in a World of 
Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic Thaumaturgy, and 
feats of Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we have not 
such a Hat; and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and 
scantily help himself w^ithout one. 

'-'- Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, or 
Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of 
his Lyre ? Yet tell me, Who built these walls of Weiss- 
nichtwo ; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance 
along from the Steinbnich (now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, 
with frightful green-mantled pools) ; and shape themselves 
into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and 
noble streets ? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, or 
Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the divine Music of 
Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man ? Our highest 
Orpheus walked in Judea, eighteen-hundred years ago : 
his sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive 
the ravished souls of men ; and, being of a truth sphere- 
melody, still flows and sounds, though now with thousand- 
fold accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all our 
hearts ; and modulates, and divinely leads them. Is that 
a wonder, which happens in two hours ; and does it cease 



232 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

to be wonderful if happening in two million? Not only was 
Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus ; but without the 
music of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no 
work that man glories in ever done. 

"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, if thou have 
eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far-distant Mover : 
The stroke that came transmitted through a whole galaxy of 
elastic balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball only had 
been struck, and sent flying ? O, could I (with the Time- 
annihilating Hat) transport thee direct from the Beginnings 
to the Endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy 
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then 
/sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest 
province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; 
that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most 
through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still 
beams. But Nature, Vv^hich is the Time-vesture of God, and 
reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 

"Again, could any thing be more miraculous than an actual 
authentic Ghost? The English Johnson longed, all his life, 
to see one ; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and 
thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish 
Doctor ! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with 
the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life 
he so loved ; did he never so much as look into Himself ? 
The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as 
heart could wish ; well-nigh a million of Ghosts were travel- 
ling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away 
the illusion of Time ; compress the threescore years into 
three minutes ; what else was he, what else are we ? Are 
we not Spirits, that are shaped into a body, into an Appear- 
ance ; and that fade away again into air and Invisibility? 
This is no rretaphor, it is a simple scientific fact: we start 




"THEY ARE DUST AND SHADOW . . . WARRIOR AND WAR-HORSE 
ARE A VISION, A REVEALED FORCE, NOTHING MORE.'"~Pa£-e 233. 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALTSM. 233 

out of Nothingness, take figure, and are Apparitions ; round 
us, as round the veriest spectre, is Eternity; and to Eternity 
minutes are as years and aeons. Come there not tones of 
Love and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song 
of beatified Souls? And again, do not we squeak and jibber 
(in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminat- 
ings) ; and ghde bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or uproar 
{polteni\ and revel in our mad Dance of the Dead, — till the 
scent of the morning air summons us to our still Home; and 
dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? Where now is 
Alexander of Macedon : does the steel Host, that yelled in 
fierce battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; 
or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Goblins 
must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Retreats and Auster- 
litz Campaigns ! Was it all other than the veriest Spectre- 
hunt ; w^iich has now, with its howling tumult that made 
Night hideous, flitted away? — Ghosts! There are nigh a 
thousand-million walking the Earth openly at noontide ; 
some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half-hundred 
have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

" O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that 
we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, 
in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; 
this stormy Force ; this life-blood with its burning Passion? 
They are dust and shadow: a Shadow-system gathered round 
our Me ; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine 
Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior on his 
strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force dwells 
in his arm and heart: but warrior and war-horse are a vision ; 
a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they tread the 
Earth, as if it were a firm substance: fool! the Earth is but 
a film ; it cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse sink 
beyond plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself 



234 ^ARTOk kESARTUS, 

will not follow them. A little while age, they were not; a 
little while, and they are not, their very ashes are not. 

"So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to the 
end. Generation after generation takes to itself the Form 
of a Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian Night, on 
Heaven's mission appears. What Force and Fire is in 
each he expends : one grinding in the mill of Industry; one 
hunter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights of Science ; 
one madly dashed in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war 
with his fellow: — and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his 
earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes 
a vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild- 
thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mysterious 
Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, quick-succeed- 
ing grandeur, through the unknown Deep. Thus, like 
a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we emerge from 
the Inane ; haste stormfully across the astonished Earth ; 
then plunge again into the Inane. Earth's mountains are 
levelled, and her seas filled up, in our passage . can the 
Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist Spirits which 
have reahty and are alive .^ On the hardest adamant some 
footprint of us is stamped-in ; the last Rear of the host will 
read traces of the earliest Van. But whence? — O Heaven, 
whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows not; only that it 
is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and to God. 

' We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep ! ' " 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 535 



CHAPTER IX. 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

HERE, then, arises the so momentous question : Have 
many British Readers actually arrived with us at the 
new promised country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now 
at last opening around them? Long and adventurous has 
the journey been : from those outmost vulgar, palpable 
Woollen Hulls of Man ; through his wondrous Flesh- 
Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures ; inwards to 
the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space 
themselves ! And now does the spiritual, eternal Essence 
of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in 
any measure to reveal itself '^, Can many readers discern, 
as through a glass darkly, in huge wavering outlines, some 
primeval rudiments of Man's Being, what is changeable 
divided from what is unchangeable ? Does that Earth- 
Spirit's speech in Faicst^ — 



" 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply 



And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by ; " 

or that other thousand -times repeated speech of the 
Magician, Shakspeare, — 

" And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wrack behind : " 



236 SARTOR RESARTVS. 

begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we at 
length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation and 
Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human 
Society, and of all Human Things, appears possible, is seen 
to be inevitable ? 

• Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which the 
Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself enabled 
to conclude if not complete, it cannot be his sober calcula- 
tion, but only his fond hope, that many have travelled with- 
out accident. No firm arch, overspanning the Impassable 
with paved highway, could the Editor construct ; only, as 
was said, some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously 
thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were too 
often of a breakneck character; the darkness, the nature of 
the element, all was against us ! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a thousand, 
provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare in our day, 
have cleared the passage, in spite of all '^. Happy few ! 
little band of Friends ! be welcome, be of courage. By 
degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its new Whereabout ; 
the hand can stretch itself forth to work there : it is in this 
grand and indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye shall 
labor, each according to ability. New laborers will arrive ; 
new Bridges will be built ; nay, may not our own poor rope- 
and-raft Bridge, in your passings and repassings, be mended, 
in many a point, till it grow quite firm, passable even for the 
halt ? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started with 
us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innumerable 
remainder, whom we see no longer by our side? The most 
have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in unsympathetic 
astonishment, at our career : not a few, pressing forward 
with more courage, have missed footing, or leaped short ;; 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 237 

and now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some towards 
this shore, some towards that. To these also a helping 
hand should be held out; at least some word of encourage- 
ment be said. 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of utter- 
ance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat infected us, — 
can it be hidden from the Editor that many a British Reader 
sits reading quite bewildered in head, and afflicted rather 
than instructed by the present Work ? Yes, long ago has 
many a British Reader been, as now, demanding with some- 
thing like a snarl: Whereto does all this lead; or what use 
is in it? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise aiding 
thy digestive faculty, O British Reader, it leads to nothing, 
and there is no use in it ; but rather the reverse, for it costs 
thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this unpromising 
Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means of him, have led 
thee into the true Land of Dreams ; and through the Clothes- 
Screen, as through a magical Pierre-Pertuis^ thou lookest, 
even for moments, into the region of the Wonderful, and seest 
and feelest that thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based 
on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles, 
— then art thou profited beyond money's worth ; and hast a 
thankfulness towards our Professor ; nay, perhaps in many 
a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly 
express that same. 
r Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this time made 
f aware that al l Sym bols are properly Clothes ; that all Forms 
whereby Spirit manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly 
or in the imagination, are Clothes ; and thus not only the 
parchment Magna Charta, which a Tailor was nigh cutting 
into measures, but the Pomp and Authority of Law, the 
sacredness of Majesty, and all inferior Worships (Worth- 



238 ' SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ships) are properly a Vesture and Raiment; and the Thiity- 
nine Articles themselves are articles of wearing-apparel 
(for the Religious Idea)? In which case, must it not also be 
admitted that this Science of Clothes is a high one, and may 
with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit : 
that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, and Political 
Economy, and the Theory of the British Constitution ; nay 
rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, as 
on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where the 
Vestures which it has to fashion, and consecrate and dis- 
tribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives who see 
no farther than their nose, mechanically woven and spun ? / 
But omitting all this, much more all that concerns Natural 
Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has reference to the 
Ulterior or Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears 
never so remotely on that promised Volume of the Palin- 
genesie der menschlichen Gesellschaft (Newbirth of Society), 
— we humbly suggest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, 
even the lowest, is without its direct value, but that innu- 
merable inferences of a practical nature may be drawn there- 
from. To say nothing of those pregnant considerations, 
ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes- 
Philosopher from the very threshold of his Science ; nothing- 
even of those " architectural ideas,'* which, as we have seen, 
lurk at the bottom of all Modes, and will one day, better 
unfolding themselves, lead to important revolutions, —let us 
glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes- 
Philosophy, on what may be called the Habilatory Class of 
our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so much were 
to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, 
washers, and wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark 
recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we may live, — 
let us but turn the reader's attention upon two small divisions 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 239 

of mankind, who, like moths, may be regarded as Cloth- 
animals, creatures that live, move and have their being in 
Cloth: we mean, Dandies and Tailors. 

In regard to both which small divisions it maybe asserted 
without scruple, that the public feeling, unenlightened by 
Philosophy, is at fault ; and even that the dictates of human- 
ity ar^ violated. As will perhaps abundantly appear to 
readers of the two following Chapters. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DANDIACAL BODY. 

FIRST, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some 
scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy 
is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and 
existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty 
of his soul, spirit, purse and person is heroically consecrated 
to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well ; so 
that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. The all- 
importance of Clothes, which a German Professor, of 
unequalled learning and acumen, writes his enormous Vol- 
ume to demonstrate, has sprung up in the intellect of the 
Dandy without effort, like an instinct of genius ; he is 
'inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdrockh 
would call a " Divine Idea of Cloth '' is born with him; and 
and this, like other such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, 
or wring his heart asunder with unutterable throes. 

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly 
makes his Idea an Action \ shows himself in peculiar guise 
to mankind ; walks forth, a witness and living Martyr to the 
eternal worth of Qpthes, We called him a Poet : is not his 



240 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

body the (stuffed) parchment-skin whereon he writes, with 
cunning Huddersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eye- 
brow ? Say, rather, an Epos, and Clotha Virurnque ca7to, 
to the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that runs 
may read. Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissible, 
that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle in him, and some 
notions of Time and Space, is there not in this Life-devoted- 
ness to Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to 
the Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that 
blending and identification of Eternity with Time, which, as 
we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, 
and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return ? 
Solely, we may say, that you would recognize his existence ; 
would admit him to be a living object ; or even failing this, 
a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. Your 
silver or your gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has 
already secured him) he solicits not ; simply the glance of 
your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or altogether 
miss and misinterpret it ; do but look at him, and he is 
contented. May we not well cry shame on an ungrateful 
world, which refuses even this poor boon; which will waste 
its optic faculty on dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins ; 
and over the domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live 
Dandy, glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely con- 
cealed contempt ! Him no Zoologist classes among the 
Mammalia, no Anatomist dissects with care: when did we 
see any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our Museums ; 
any specimen of him preserved in spirits ? Lord Herring- 
bone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff- 
brown shirt and shoes ; it skills not ; the undiscerning public, 
occupied with grosser wants, passes by regardless on the 
other side. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY, 2\\ 

The age uf Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed, 
properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep : 
for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, 
strangely enough, both the one and the other ! Should 
sound views of this Science come to prevail, the essential 
nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance 
that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under laugh- 
able and lamentable hallucination. The following long 
Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh may set the matter, 
if not in its true light, yet in the way towards such. It is 
to be regretted, however, that here, as so often elsewhere, 
the Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is somewhat 
marred by a certain mixture of almost owhsh purblindness, 
or else of some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency ; our 
readers shall judge which : 

"In these distracted times," writes he, ^' when the Reli- 
gious Principle, driven out of most Churches, either lies 
unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and longing and 
silently working there towards some new Revelation ; or else 
wanders homeless over the world, like a disembodied soul 
seeking its terrestrial organization, — into how many strange 
shapes, of Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not tenta- 
tively and errantly cast itself ! The higher Enthusiasm of 
man's nature is for the while without ExjDonent ; yet does 
it continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work 
blindly in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, and 
Church after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again 
into new metamorphosis. 

" Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the 
wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, offers 
precisely the elements (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness) 
in which such moon-calves and monstrosities are best 



242 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

generated. Among the newer Sects of that country, one 
of the most notable, and closely connected with our present 
subject, is that of the Dandies ; concerning which, what little 
information I have been able to procure may fitly stand here. 

" It is true, certain of the English Journah'sts, men gener- 
ally without sense for the Religious Principle, or judgment 
for its manifestations, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, 
as if this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, and not a 
Religious one ; nevertheless, to the psychologic eye its 
devotional and even sacrificial character plainly enough 
reveals itself. Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish- 
worships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or to what 
other class, may in the present state of our intelligence 
remain undecided (schweben). A certain touch of Mani- 
cheism, not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible 
enough : also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and 
re-appears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resemblance to 
that Superstitution of the Athos Monks, who by fasting 
from all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of 
time into their own navels, came to discern therein the true 
Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To my own 
surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect were but a new 
modification, adapted to the new time, of that primeval 
Superstition, Self-worship ; which Zerdusht, Quangfout- 
chee, Mohamed, and others, strove rather to subordinate 
and restrain than to eradicate ; and which only in the purer 
forms of Religion has been altogether rejected. Wherefore, 
if any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new 
figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, 
no objection. 

" For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of a 
new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and what force 
there is in man's nature, though never so enslaved. They 



THE DANDIACAL BODY, 243 

affect great purity and separatism ; distinguish themselves 
by a particular costume (whereof some notices were given 
in the earlier part of this Volume) ; likewise, so far as 
possible, by a particular speech (apparently some broken 
Lingiia-franca^ or English-French); and, on the whole, 
strive to maintain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep 
themselves unspotted from the world. 

" They have -their Temples, whereof the chief, as the 
Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and is 
named Almack's, a word of uncertain etymology. They 
worship principally by night : and have their Highpriests 
and Highpriestesses, who, however, do not continue for life. 
The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or 
perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held 
strictly secret. Nor are Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; 
these they call Fashionable Novels : however, the Canon is 
not completed, and some are canonical and others not. 

'• Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, procured 
myself some samples ; and in hope of true insight, and with 
the zeal which beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, set to 
interpret and study them. But wholly to no purpose : that 
tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse 
me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught. 
In vain that I summoned my whole energies {tnich weidlich 
anstrengte), and did my very utmost ; at the end of some 
short space, I was uniformly seized with not so much what 
I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of infinite, 
unsufferable, Jew's-harping and scrannel-piping there ; to 
which the frightfullest species of Magnetic Sleep soon super- 
vened. And if I strove to shake this away, and absolutely 
would not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of 
Delirium Tremens^ and a melting into total deliquium: till 
at last, by order of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole 



P,A4- SARTOR RESARTUS, 

intellectual and bodily faculties, and a general breaking-up 
of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly forbore. 
Was there some miracle at work here ; like those Fire-balls^ 
and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in the case of 
the Jewish Mysteries, have also more than once scared-back 
the Alien ? Be this as it may, such failure on my part, after 
best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of this sketch ; 
altogether incomplete, yet the completest I could give of a 
Sect too singular to be omitted. 

*' Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power shall 
induce me, as a private individual, to open another Fashion- 
able Novel, But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand 
from the clouds ; whereby if not victory, dehverance is held 
out to me. Round one of those Book-packages, which the 
Stillschweigen^ schc Buchhandlung is in the habit of import- 
ing from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed- 
sheets (Maculatur-bldtter\ by way of interior wrappage : 
into these the Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mohame- 
dan reverence even for waste-paper, where curious knowledge 
will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast his eye. Readers 
may judge of his astonishment when on such a defaced 
vStray-sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some English 
Periodical, such as they name Magazine^ appears something 
like a Dissertation on this very subject of FasJiioiiable 
Novels I It sets out, indeed, chiefly from a Secular point 
of view ; directing itself, not without asperity, against some 
to me unknown individual uamed Pelham^ who seems to be 
a Mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the 
Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be expected 
in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the 
Religious physiognomy and physiology of the Dandiacal 
Body is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, 
scattered lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby I 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 245 

have endeiivorea to profit. Nay, in one passage selected 
from the Prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, or whatever 
they are (for the style seems very mixed) of this Mysta- 
gogue, I find what appears to be a Confession of Faith, or 
Whole Duty of Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. 
Which Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding 
from a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven 
distinct Articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the 
German world ; therewith taking leave of this matter. 
Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, as far as 
may be, quote literally from the Original : 

" ' ARTICLES OF FAITH. 

" * I. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about them ; 
at the same time, wrinkles behind should be carefully avoided. 

" ' 2. The collar is a very important point : it should be low 
behind, and slightly rolled. 

" ' 3. No license of fashion can allow a man of delicate taste 
to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 

" ' 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

" ^ 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more finely 
developed than in his rings. 

" ' 6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restrictions, 
to wear white waistcoats. 

^" 7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight across the 
hips.' 

'^ All which Propositions I, for the present, content myself 
with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably denying. 

*' In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands 
another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of Ireland, 
where its chief seat still is ; but known also in the main 
Island, and indeed everywhere rapidly spreading. As this 
Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical Books, it remains to 



246 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

me in the same state of obscurity as the Dandiacal, which 
has published Books that the unassisted human faculties 
are inadequate to read. The members appear to be desig- 
nated by a considerable diversity of names, according to 
their various places of establishment : in England they are 
generally called the Drudge Sect ; also, unphilosophically 
enough, the White Negroes j and, chiefly in scorn by those 
of other communions, the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scotland, 
again, I find them entitled Hallanshakers^ or the Stook of 
Duds Sect ; any individual communicant is named Stook 
of Duds (that is. Shock of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to 
their professional Costume. While in Ireland, which, as 
mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplex- 
ing multiplicity of designations, such as Bogtrotters^ Red- 
shanks^ Ribboninen^ Cottiers^ Peep-ofDay Boys^ Babes of 
the Wood^ Rockites^ Poor-Slaves : which last, however, seems 
to be the primary and generic name ; whereto, probably 
enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight 
varieties ; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent 
stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, 
it were here loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to 
understand, what seems indubitable, that the original Sect 
is that of the Poor-Slaves j whose doctrines, practices, and 
fundamental characteristics pervade and animate the whole 
Body, howsoever denominated or outwardly diversified. 

"The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood; how 
the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture themselves 
to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ;' with what feelings and 
opinions he looks forward on the Future, round on the Pres- 
ent, back on the Past, it were extremely difficult to specify. 
Something Monastic there appears to be in their Constitu- 
tion : we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, of 
Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows, especially the former, 



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THEY APPEAR TO IMITATE THE DANDIACAL SECT IN THEIR GRAND PRINCIPLE 
OF WEARING A PECULIAR COSTUME."— /'rt^^ 247. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY, 2\J 

It is said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn 
Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably consecrated thereto, 
even before birth. That the third Monastic Vow, of Chas- 
tity, is rigidly enforced among them, I find no ground to 
conjecture. 

^'Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal Sect 
in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar Costume. Of 
which Irish Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed 
be found in the present Volume ; for this reason, that by the 
imperfect organ of Language it did not seem describable. 
Their raiment consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and 
irregular wings, of all cloths and of all colors; through the 
labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are introduced 
by some unknown process. It is fastened together by a 
multiplex combination of buttons, thrums and skewers ; to 
which frequently is added a girdle of leather, of hempen 
or even of straw rope, round the loins. To straw rope, 
indeed, they seem partial, and often wear it by way of san- 
dals. In head-dress they affect a certain freedom : hats with 
partial brim, without crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or 
valved crown ; in the former case, they sometimes invert the 
hat, and wear it brim uppermost, like a University-cap, with 
what'view is unknown. 

** The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a Slavonic, 
Polish, or Russian origin : not so, however, the interior 
essence and spirit of their Superstitution, which rather 
displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. One might 
fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth : for they 
dig and affectionately work continually in her bosom ; or 
else, shut-up in private Oratories, meditate and manipulate 
the substances derived from her; seldom looking-up towards 
the Heavenly Luminaries, and then with comparative indif- 



248 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

ference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they live in 
dark dwellings ; often even breaking their glass-windows, 
where they find such, and stuffing them up with pieces of 
raiment, or other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is 
restored. Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they 
are liable to outbreakings of an enthusiasm rising to ferocity; 
and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. 

"In respect of diet, they have also their observances. 
All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a few 
are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : other animal 
food they abstain from ; except indeed, with perhaps some 
strange inverted fragment of a Brahminical feeling, such 
animals as die a natural death. Their universal sustenance 
is the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and gener- 
ally without condiment or relish of any kind, save an 
unknown condiment named Pointy into the meaning of 
which I have vainly inquired ; the victual Potatoes-aiid- 
Point not appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of 
description, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For 
drink, they use, with an almost epigrammatic counterpoise 
of taste, Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and Potheen^ 
which is the fiercest. This latter I have tasted, as well as 
the English Blue-Ruiit^ and the Scotch Whiskey^ analogous 
fluids used by the Sect in those countries : it evidently 
contains some form of alcohol, in the highest state of 
concentration, though disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on 
the whole, the most pungent substance known to me, — 
indeed, a perfect liquid fire. In all their Rehgious Solemni- 
ties, Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and 
largely consumed. 

" An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who 
presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of The 
late John Bernard^ offers the following sketch of a domestic 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 249 

establishment, the inmates vvliereof, though such is not 
stated expressly, appear to have been of that Faith. There- 
by shall my German readers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, 
as it were with their own eyes ; and even see him at meat. 
Moreover, in the so precious waste-paper sheet above 
mentioned, I have found some corresponding picture of a 
Dandiacal Household, painted by that same Dandiacal 
Mystagogue, or Theogonist : this also, by way of counter- 
part and contrast, the world shall look into. 

" First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears likewise 
to have been a species of Innkeeper. I quote from the 

original : 

Poor-Slave Household. 

^' ' The furniture of this Caravansera consisted of a large 
iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two Benches, two Chairs, and a 
Potheen Noggin. There was a Loft above (attainable by 
a ladder), upon which the inmates slept ; and the space 
below was divided by a hurdle into two Apartments ; the 
one for their cow and pig, the other for themselves and 
guests. On entering the house we discovered the family, 
eleven in number, at dinner: the father sitting at the top, 
the mother at the bottom, the children on each side, of a 
large oaken Board, which was scooped-out in the middle, like 
a trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of Potatoes. 
Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain Salt; 
and a bowl of Milk stood on the table : all the luxuries 
of meat and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dispensed 
with.' The Poor-Slave himself our Traveller found, as he 
says, broad-backed, black-browed, of great personal strength, 
and mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned 
but well-featured woman ; and his young ones, bare and 
chubby, had the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical 
or Religious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. 



250 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household ; in 
which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and inspired 
Penman himself has his abode : 

Dandiacal Household. 

*' ' A Dressing-room splendidly furnished ; violet-colored 
curtains, chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full- 
lengih Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which 
supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of Per- 
fumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon a smaller 
table of mother-of-pearl : opposite to these are placed the 
appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. 
A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left; the doors of which, being 
partly open, discover a profusion of Clothes ; Shoes of a 
singularly small size monopolize the lower shelves. Front- 
ing the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a 
Bath-room. Folding-doors in the background. — Enter the 
Author,' our Theogonist in person, ' obsequiously preceded 
by a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric Apron.' 

" Such are the two Sects which, at this moment, divide the 
more unsettled portion of the British People ; and agitate 
that ever-vexed country. To the eye of the political Seer, 
their mutual relation, pregnant with the elements of discord 
and hostility, is far from consoling. These two principles 
of Dandiacal Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor- 
Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same 
Drudgism may be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves 
under distant and nowise considerable shapes : nevertheless, 
in their roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend 
through the entire structure of Society, and work unwear- 
iedly in the secret depths of English national Existence ; 
striving to separate and isolate it into two contradictory, 
uncommunicating masses. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY, 25 1 

"In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor- 
Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. 
The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytizing Sect; 
but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and is strong by 
union ; whereas the Drudges, split into parties, have as yet 
no rallying-point ; or at best only co-operate by means of 
partial secret affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a 
Communion of Drudges^ as there is already a Communion 
of Saints, what strangest effects would follow therefrom ! 
Dandyism as yet affects to look-down on Drudgism : but 
perhaps the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen 
which ought to look down, and which up, is not so 
distant. 

" To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one day 
part England between them ; each recruiting itself from the 
intermediate ranks, till there be none left to enlist on either 
side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of Dandy- 
izing Christians, will form one body : the Drudges, gathering 
round them whosoever is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel 
Pagan ; sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radi- 
cals, refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general 
mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudg- 
ism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that had broken-out 
on opposite quarters of the firm land : as yet they appear only 
disquieted, foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might 
cover-in; yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening : 
they are hollow Cones that boil-up from the Infinite Deep, 
over which your firm land is but a thin crust or rind ! Thus 
daily is the intermediate land crumbling-in, daily the empire 
of the two Buchan-Bullers extending ; till now there is but a 
foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them ; this too is 
washed away: and then — we have the true Hell of Waters, 
and Noah's Deluge is outdeluged ! 



252 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" Or better, I might call them two boundless, and indeed 
unexampled Electric Machines (turned by the " Machinery of 
Society"), with batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the 
Negative, Dandyism the Positive : one attracts hourly towards 
it and appropriates all the Positive Electricity of the nation 
(namely, the Money thereof); the other is equally busy with 
the Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 
potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient sparkles and 
sputters : but wait a little, till the entire nation is in an elec- 
tric state ; till your whole vital Electricity, no longer health- 
fully neutral, is cut into two isolated portions of Positive and 
Negative (of Money and of Hunger); and stands there 
bottled-up in two World Batteries ! The stirring of a child's 
finger brings the two together; and then — What then? 
The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that 
Doom's thunderpeal ; the Sun misses one of his Planets in 
Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the Moon. 
— Or better still, I might liken " — 

O, enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in excess 
of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufelsdrockh or 
ourselves sin the more. 

We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-drawing 
and over-refining; from of old we have been familiar with 
his tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in 
every thing he was still scenting-out Religion: but never 
perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions so cloud and distort 
his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this of the Dandia- 
cal Body I Or was there something of intended satire ; is 
the Professor and Seer not quite the blinkard he affects 
to be ? Of an ordinary mortal we should have decisively 
answered in the affirmative ; but with a Teufelsdrockh there 
ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean while, if 
satire were actually intended, the case is little better. There 



TAILORS, 253 

are not wanting men who will answer: Does your Professor 
take us for simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we 
see through it, and perhaps through him. 



CHAPTER XI. 

TAILORS. 

^pHUS, however, has our first Practical Inference from 
J- the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, 
been sufficiently drawn ; and we come now to the second, 
concerning Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily quite 
coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as expressed 
in the concluding page of his Volume, to whom, therefore, 
we willingly give place. Let him speak his own last words, 
in his own way: 

" Upwards of a century," says he, ^' must elapse, and still 
the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is noblest 
perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on altars like 
Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his victims, 
and the Michael of Justice his martyrs, before Tailors can 
be admitted to their true prerogatives of manhood, and this 
last wound of suffering Humanity be closed. 

'-' If aught in the history of the world's blindness could 
surprise us, here might we indeed pause and wonder. An 
idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself down into a wide- 
spreading rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species in 
Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of a Man. Call 
any one a Schneider (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dis- 
located, hood-winked, and indeed delirious condition of 
Society, equivalent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity 1 



254 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

The epithet schiieider-uidssig (tailor-like) betokens an other 
wise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity : we introduce 
a Tailor's-Melancholy, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, 
into our Books of Medicine ; and fable I know not what 
of his generating it by living on Cabbage. Why should I 
speak of Hans Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of 
Leather-Tailor), with his Schneider mil de7n Panier? 
Why of Shakspeare, in his Taming of the Shrew, and 
elsewhere? Does it not stand on record that the English 
Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, 
addressed them with a '• Good morning, gentlemen both ! ' 
Did not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry 
Regiment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured ; 
her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares ? Thus every- 
where is the falsehood taken for granted, and acted on as 
an indisputable fact. 

" Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Physiolo- 
gist, whether it is disputable or not ? Seems it not at least 
presumable, that, under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones 
and viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious ? Which 
function of manhood is the Tailor not conjectured to per- 
form ? Can he not arrest for debt.^ Is he not in most 
countries a tax-paying animal ? 

" To no reader of this Volume can it be doubtful which 
conviction is mine. Nay if the fruit of these long vigils, 
and almost preternatural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, 
the world will have approximated towards a higher Truth ; 
and the doctrine, which Swift, with the keen forecast of 
genius, dimly anticipated, will stand revealed in clear light : 
that the Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator 
or Divinity. Of Frankhn it was said, that ' he snatched the 
Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre from Kings : ' but 
which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, pr he that 




'THE WORLD WILL RECOGNIZE THAT THE TAILOR IS ITS HIEROl'HANT 
AM) HIERAKCH OK EVEN ITS GOD." — Page 255. 



TAILORS. 25 s 

snatches ? For, looking away from individual cases, and 
how a Man is by the Tailor new-created into a Nobleman, 
and clothed not only with Wool but with Dignity and a 
Mystic Dominion, — is not the fair fabric of Society itself, 
with all its royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, 
from nakedness and dismemberment, we are organized into 
Polities, into nations, and a whole co-operating Mankind, the 
creation, as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the 
Tailor alone? — What too are all Poets and moral Teachers, 
but a species of Metaphorical Tailors ? Touching which 
high Guild the greatest living Guild-brother has triumph- 
antly asked us : ' Nay if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet 
first made Gods for men ; brought them down to us ; and 
raised us up to them ? ' 

" And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard basis 
of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, as the 
ninth part of a man ! Look up, thou much-injured one, look 
up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic bodings of 
a noble better time. Too long hast thou sat there, on 
crossed legs, wearing thy ankle-joints to horn ; like some 
sacred Anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing- 
down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that scoffed 
at thee. Be of hope ! Already streaks of blue peer through 
our clouds ; the thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, 
and it will be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their 
long-accumulated debt : the Anchorite that was scoffed at 
will be worshipped ; the Fraction will become not an Integer 
only, but a Square and Cube. With astonishment the world 
will recognize that the Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, 
or even its God. 

"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked 
upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and embroider- 
ing that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends yearly for the 



256 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: How many othet 
Unholies has your covering Art made holy, besides this 
Arabian Whinstone ! 

" Still more touching was it when, turning the corner of 
a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came upon a 
Signpost, whereon stood written that such and such a one 
was * Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;' and stood painted 
the Effigies of a Pair of Leather Breeches, and between the 
knees these memorable words, Sic itur ad astra. Was 
not this the martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed 
in bonds, yet sighing towards deliverance, and prophetically 
appealing to a better day ? A day of justice, when the worth 
of Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors 
become forever venerable. 

" Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal been 
altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, when the 
soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is open to inspiring 
influence, that I first conceived this Work on Clothes: the 
greatest I can ever hope to do ; which has already, after 
long retardations, occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a 
section of my Life ; and of which the Primary and simpler 
Portion may here find its conclusion." 



CHAPTER XIL 

i^AREWELL. 

SO have we endeavored, from the enormous, amorphous 
Plum-pudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr 
Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow mortals, to pick 
out the choicest Plums, and present them separately on a 
cover of our own, A laborious, perhaps a thankless enter- 



FAREWELL. 2$y 

prise; in which, however, something of hope has occasion- 
ally cheered us, and of which we can now wash our hands 
not altogether without satisfaction. If hereby, though in 
barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have 
been added to the scanty ration of our beloved British world, 
what nobler recompense could the Editor desire ? If it 
prove otherwise, why should he murmur? Was not this a 
Task which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him ; which 
having now done with, he sees his general Day's-work so 
much the lighter, so much the shorter ? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to take 
leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, gratitude 
and disapproval. Who will not regret that talents, which 
might have profited in the higher walks in Philosophy, or in 
Art itself, have been so much devoted to a rummaging among 
lumber-rooms ; nay too often to a scraping in kennels, where 
lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole con- 
quests ? Regret is unavoidable ; yet censure were loss of 
time. To cure him of his mad humors British Criticism 
would essay in vain: enough for her if she can, by vigilance, 
prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What a 
result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical 
style of writing, not to say of thinking, become general among 
our Literary men ! As it might so easily do. Thus has not 
the Editor himself, working over Teufelsdrockh's German, 
lost much of his own English purity ? Even as the smaller 
whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl along 
with it, so has the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced 
to become portion of the greater, and, like it, see all things 
figuratively : which habit time and assiduous effort will be 
needed to eradicate. 

Nevertheless, w^ayward as our Professor shows himself, is 
there any reader that can part with him in declared enmity? 



258 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Let us confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffering, 
much-infiicting man, which ahuost attaches us. His attitude, 
we will hope and believe, is that of a man who had said to 
Cant, Begone ; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be; 
and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me : a man who had 
manfully defied the " Time-prince," or Devil, to his face ; 
nay perhaps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated 
from birfh to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage 
the same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In 
such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scytheman, 
shall be welcome. 

Still the question returns on us : How could a man occa- 
sionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of propriety, 
who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit 
them in a shape bordering so closely on the absurd? Which 
question he were wiser than the present Editor who should 
satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, 
that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was concerned in 
it. Seems it not conceivable that, in a Life like our Profes- 
sor's, where so much bountifully given by Nature had in 
Practice failed and misgone. Literature also would never 
rightly prosper: that striving with his characteristic vehe- 
mence to paint this and the other Picture, and ever without 
success, he at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all 
colors, against the canvas, to try whether it will paint Foam ? 
With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh 
desperation enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even less warranty. 
It is, that Teufelsdrockh is not without some touch of the 
universal feeling, a wish to proselytize. How often already 
have we paused, uncertain whether the basis of this so enig- 
matic nature were really Stoicism and Despair, or Love and 
Hope only seared into the figure of these ! Remarkable, 



FAREWELL. 259 

moreover, is this saying of his: *' How were Friendship 
possible? In mutual devotedness to the Good and True: 
otherwise impossible ; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow 
Commercial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, 
is sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, 
capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly would 
fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to man." And now 
in conjunction therewith consider this other: " It is the Night 
of the World, and still long till it be Day: we wander amid 
the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of 
Heaven are as if blotted out for a season ; and two immeas- 
urable Phantoms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the Gowl, 
Sensuality, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs : 
well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a shallow 
Dream." 

But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a Reality? 
Should not these unite ; since even an authentic Spectre is 
not visible to Two ? — In which case were this enormous 
Clothes-Volume properly an enormous Pitchpan, which our 
Teufelsdrockh in his lone watchtower had kindled, that it 
might flame far and wide through the Night, and many a 
disconsolately wandering spirit be guided thither to a 
Brother's bosom ! — We say as before, with all his malign 
Indifference, who knows what mad Hopes this man may 
harbor ? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which har- 
monizes ill with such conjecture; and, indeed, were Teufels- 
drockh made like other men, might as good as altogether 
subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon-fire blazed its 
brightest, the Watchman had quitted it ; that no pilgrim 
could now ask him : Watchman, what of the Night? Pro- 
fessor Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer visibly 
present at Weissnichtwo, but again to all appearance lost 



26o SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in space ! Some time ago, the Hofrath Heuschrecke was 
pleased to favor us with another copious Epistle; wherein 
much is said about the "Population-Institute;" much 
repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the hiero- 
glyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems not to have 
surmised; and, lastly, the strangest occurrence communi- 
cated, to us for the first time, in the following paragraph : 

^'- Ew. Wohlgeboren will have seen from the public Prints, 
with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless solicitude 
Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of her Sage. 
Might but the united voice of Germany prevail on him to 
return ; nay could we but so much as elucidate for ourselves 
by what mystery he went away ! But, alas, old Lieschen 
experiences or affects the profoundest deafness, the pro- 
foundest ignorance : in the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, 
sealed up ; the Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no 
answer. 

" It had been remarked that while the agitating news of 
those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to mouth, and 
dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was 
not known, at the Gafis or elsewhere, to have spoken, for a 
whole week, any syllable except once these three : Es geht 
an (It is beginning). Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgeboren 
knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threat- 
ened by a Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want 
Evil-wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who 
asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes- Volume 
was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of 
our Philosopher was indescribable : nay, perhaps through 
one humble individual, something thereof might pass into 
the Rath (Council) itself, and so contribute to the country's 
deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely pacificated. — 

" To neither of these two incidents can I attribute our loss : 



. FAREWELL, 26 1 

yet still comes there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris 
and its Politics. For example, when the Saint-Si7no}iian 
Society transmitted its Propositions hither, and the whole 
Gans was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation and 
astonishment, our Sage sat mute ; and at the end of the 
third evening said merely : ^ Here also are men who have 
discovered, not without amazement, that Man is still Man ; 
of which high, long-forgotten Truth you already see them 
make a false application.' Since then, as has been ascer- 
tained by examination of the Post-Director, there passed at 
least one Letter with its Answer between the Messieurs 
Bazard-Enfantin and our Professor himself; of what tenor 
can now only be conjectured. On the fifth night following, 
ne was seen for the last time ! 

" Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of the 
hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirlt'<;d away by 
certain of their emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to 
their headquarters to confer with them and confront them ? 
Reason we have, at least of a negative sort, to believe the 
Lost still living; our widowed heart also whispers that ere 
long he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, his 
archives must, one day, be opened by Authority; where 
much, perhaps the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be 
reposited." 

Thus far the Hofrath ; who vanishes, as is his wont, too 
like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 

So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done, 
then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor: nay, perhaps 
the better part thereof were only beginning .^ We stand in 
a region of conjectures, where substance has melted into 
shadow, and one cannot be distinguished from the other. 
May Time, which solves or suppresses all proble.ns, throw 



262 SARTOR RRSARTUS, 

glad light on this also ! Our own private conjecture, now 
amounting almost to certainty, is that, safe-moored in some 
stillest obscurity, not to lie always still, Teufelsdrockh is 
actually in London ! 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an ambrosial 
joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay down his pen. 
Well does he know, if human testimony be worth aught, that 
to innumerable British readers likewise, this is a satisfying 
consummation ; that innumerable British readers consider 
him, during these current months, but as an uneasy inter- 
ruption to their ways of thought and digestion; and indicate 
so much, not without a certain irritancy and even spoken 
invective. For which, as for other mercies, ought not he to 
thank the Upper Powers ? To one and all of you, O irri- 
tated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, 
will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, 
who namest thyself Yorke and Oliver, and with thy 
vivacities and genialities, with thy ail-too Irish mirth and 
madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such strange 
work, farewell ; long as thou canst, fare-Te/^/// Have we not, 
in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our 
Life-journey in partial sight of one another ; have we not 
existed together, though in a state of quarrel ? 



APPENDIX: 

TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 



This questionable little Book was undoubtedly written 
among the mountain solitudes, in 1831 ; but, owing to 
impediments natural and accidental, could not, for seven 
years more, appear as a Volume in England; — and had at 
last to clip itself in pieces, and be content to struggle out, 
bit by bit, in some courageous Magazine that offered. 
Whereby now, to certain idly curious readers, and even to 
myself till I make study, the insignificant but at last irritating 
question, What its real history and chronology are, is, if not 
insoluble, considerably involved in haze. 

To the first English Edition, 1838, which an American, or 
two American had now opened the way for, there was slight- 
ingly prefixed, under the title " Testhnonies of Authors^'''' 
some straggle of real documents, which, now that I find L 
again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence; — and 
shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory 
guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it 
Stood. {Author's Note of iS6^.) 



TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 

I. Highest Class, Bookseller's Taster. 

Taster to Bookseller. — " The Author of Teufelsdrockh is 
a person of talent; his work displays here and there some 
felicity of thought and expression, considerable fancy and 
knowledge : but whether or not it would take with the 
pubHc seems doubtful. For 2.jeic d' esprit of that kind it is 
too long; it would have suited better as an essay or article 
than as a volume. The Author has no great tact; his wit is 

265 



266 APPENDIX. 

frequently heavy ; and reminds one of the German Baron 
who took to leaping on tables, and answered that he was 
learning to be lively. Is the work a translation ? " 

Bookseller to Editor, — • *' Allow me to say that such a 
writer requires only a little more tact to produce a popular 
as well as an able work. Directly on receiving your permis- 
sion, I sent your Ms, to a gentleman in the highest class of 
men of letters, and an accomplished German scholar : I now 
enclose you his opinion, which, you may rely upon it, is a 
just one ; and I have too high an opinion of your good sense 
to " &c. &c. — Ms, {penes nos), London^ i ']th September 
1831. 

II. Critic of the Sun. 

" Eraser'' s Magazine exhibits the usual brilliancy, and also 
the " &c. " Sartor Resartus is what old Dennis used to call 
' a heap of clotted nonsense,' mixed however, here and there, 
with passages marked by thought and striking poetic vigor. 
But what does the writer mean by * Baphometic fire-baptism'? 
Why cannot he lay aside his pedantry, and write so as to 
make himself generally intelligible ? We quote by way of 
curiosity a sentence from the Sartor Resartus ; which may 
be read either backwards or forwards, for it is equally intel- 
ligible either way : indeed, by beginning at the tail, and so 
working up to the head, we think the reader will stand the 
fairest chance of getting at its meaning: * The fire-bap tieed 
soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, here feels its own 
freedom ; which feeling is its Baphometic baptism : the 
citadel of its whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, 
and will keep inexpugnable ; outwards from which the 
remaining dominions, not indeed without hard battering, will 
doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated.' Here 
is a " — . . . — Sun Newspaper^ ist April 1834. 



TESTIMONIES OE AUTHORS. 267 



III. North-American Reviewer. 

..." After a careful survey of the whole ground, our 
belief is that no such persons as Professor Teufelsdrockh or 
Counsellor Heuscbrecke ever existed; that the six Paper- 
bags, with their China-ink inscriptions and multifarious con- 
tents, are a mere figment of the brain ; that the ' present 
Editor ' is the only person who has ever written upon the 
Philosophy of Clothes ; and that the Sartor Resartus is 
the only treatise that has yet appeared upon that subject; 
— in short, that the whole account of the origin of the work 
before us, which the supposed Editor relates with so much 
gravity, and of which we have given a brief abstract, is, in 
plain English, a hum. 

" Without troubling our readers at any great length with 
our reasons for entertaining these suspicions, we may 
remark, that the absence of all other information on the 
subject, except what is contained in the work, is itself a 
fact of a most significant character. The whole German 
press, as well as the particular one where the work purports 
to have been printed, seems to be under the control of 
Stillschweigen and Co. — Silence and Company. If the 
Clothes-Philosophy and its author are making so great a 
sensation throughout Germany as is pretended, how happens 
it that the only notice we have of the fact is contained in a 
few numbers of a monthly Magazine pubhshed at London ? 
How happens it that no intelligence about the matter has 
come out directly to this country? We pique ourselves 
here in New England upon knowing at least as much of 
what is going on in the hterary way in the old Dutch 
Mother-land as our brethren of the fast-anchored Isle ; but 
thus far we have no tidings whatever of the * extensive 



268 APPENDIX. 

close-printed close-meditated volume,' which forms the sub- 
ject of this pretended commentary. Again, we would 
respectfully inquire of the ' present Editor ' upon what 
part of the map of Germany we are to look for the city of 
Weissnichtwo — ' Know-not-where ' — at which place the 
work is supposed to have been printed, and the Author to 
have resided. It has been our fortune to visit several 
portions of the German territory, and to examine pretty 
carefully, at different times and for various purposes, maps 
of the whole ; but we have no recollection of any such 
place. We suspect that the city of Know-not-where might 
be called, with at least as much propriety, Nobody-knows- 
where^ and is to be found in the kingdom of Nowhere. 
Again, the village of Entepftihl — * Duck-pond ' — where 
the supposed Author of the work is said to have passed his 
youth, and that of Hinterschlag^ where he had his educa- 
tion, are equally foreign to our geography. Duck-ponds 
enough there undoubtedly are in almost every village in 
Germany, as the traveller in that country knows too well to 
his cost, but any particular village denominated Duck-pond 
is to us altogether terra incognita. The names of the 
personages are not less singular than those of the places. 
Who can refrain from a smile at the yoking together of such 
a pair of appellatives as Diogenes Teufelsdrockh ? The 
supposed bearer of this strange title is represented as 
admitting, in his pretended autobiography, that *he had 
searched to no purpose through all the Heralds' books in 
and without the German empire, and through all manner of 
Subscribers'-lists, Militia-rolls, and other Name-catalogues,' 
but had nowhere been able to find ' the name Teufelsdrockh, 
except as appended to his own person.' We can readily 
believe this, and we doubt very much whether any Christian 
parent would think of condemning a son to carry througl. 



TESTIMONIES OE AUTHORS. 269 

life the burden of so unpleasant a title. That of Counsellor 
Heuschrecke — ' Grasshopper ' — though not offensive, 
looks much more like a piece of fancy work than a ^ fair 
business transaction.' The same may be said of Blwnine 

— ' Flower-Goddess ' — the heroine of the fable ; and so of 
the rest. 

'Mn short, our private opinion is, as we have remarked, 
that the whole story of a correspondence with Germany, a 
university of Nobody-knows-where, a Professor of Things 
in General, a Counsellor Grasshopper, a Flower-Goddess 
Blumine, and so forth, has about as much foundation in 
truth as the late entertaining account of Sir John Herschel's 
discoveries in the moon. Fictions of this kind are, however, 
not uncommon, and ought not, perhaps, to be condemned 
with too much severity; but we are not sure that we can 
exercise the same indulgence in regard to the attempt, which 
seems to be made to mislead the public as to the substance 
of the work before us, and its pretended German original. 
Both purport, as we have seen, to be upon the subject of 
Clothes, or dress. Clothes^ their Oidgin and Influence^ is 
the title of the supposed German treatise of Professor 
Teufelsdrockh, and the rather odd name of Sartor Resartics 

— the Tailor Patched — which the present Editor has affixed 
to his pretended commentary, seems to look the same way. 
But though there is a good deal of remark throughout the 
work in a half-serious, half-comic style upon dress, it seems 
to be in reality a treatise upon the great science q€ Things 
in General, which Teufelsdrockh is supposed to have pro- 
fessed at the university of Nobody-knows-where. Now, 
v.ithout intending to adopt a too rigid standard of morals, 
we own that we doubt a little the propriety of offering to the 
public a treatise on Things in General, under the name and 
in the form of an Essay on Dress. For ourselves, advanced 



270 APPENDIX, 

as we unfortunately are in the journey of life, far beyond 
the period when dress is practically a matter of interest, we 
have no hesitation in saying, that the real subject of the 
work is to us more attractive than the ostensible one. But 
this is probably not the case with the mass of readers. To 
the younger portion of the community, which constitutes 
everywhere the very great majority, the subject of dress is 
one of intense and paramount importance. An author who 
treats it appeals, like the poet, to the young men and 
maidens — uirgimbtis puerisqtie — and calls upon them, by 
all the motives which habitually operate most strongly upon 
their feelings, to buy his book. When, after opening their 
purses for this purpose, they have carried home the work in 
triumph, expecting to find in it some particular instruction 
in regard to the tying of their neckcloths, or the cut of their 
corsets, and meet with nothing better than a dissertation on 
Things in General, they will — to use the mildest term — 
not be in very good humor. If the last improvements in 
legislation, which we have made in this country, should have 
found their way to England, the author, we think, would 
stand some chance of being Lynched. Whether his object 
in this piece of supercherie be merely pecuniary profit, or 
whether he takes a malicious pleasure in quizzing the Dan- 
dies, we shall not undertake to say. In the latter part 
of the work, he devotes a separate chapter to this class of 
persons, from the tenor of which we should be disposed to 
conclude, that he would consider any mode of divesting 
them of their property very much in the nature of a spoiling 
of the Egyptians. 

" The only thing about the work, tending to prove that it 
is what it purports to be, a commentary on a real German 
treatise, is the style, which is a sort of Babylonish dialect, 
not destitute, it is true, of richness, vigor, and at times a sort 



TESTIMONIES OF AUTHORS. 2/1 

of singular felicity of expression, but very strongly tinged 
throughout with the peculiar idiom of the German language. 
This quality in the style, however, may be a mere result of a 
great familiarity with German literature ; and we cannot, 
therefore, look upon it as in itself decisive, still less as out- 
weighing so much evidence of an opposite character." — 
No7'ih-A merican Review^ No, 89, October 1835. 

IV. New-England Editors. 

"The Editors have been induced, by the express desire 
of many persons, to collect the following sheets out of the 
ephemeral pamphlets ^ in which they first appeared, under 
the conviction that they contain in themselves the assurance 
of a longer date. 

*' The Editors have no expectation that this little Work 
will have a sudden and general popularity. They will not 
undertake, as there is no need, to justify the gay costume in 
wdiich the Author delights to dress his thoughts, or the 
German idioms with which he has sportively sprinkled his 
pages. It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations 
upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque style. If 
his masquerade offend any of his audience, to that degree 
that they w^ill not hear what he has to say, it may chance to 
draw others to listen to his wisdom; and what work of 
imagination can hope to please all? But we will venture to 
remark that the distaste excited by these peculiarities in 
some readers is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten; and 
that the foreign dress and aspect of the Work are quite 
superficial, and cover a genuine Saxon heart. We believe, 
no book has been published for many years, written in a more 
sincere style of idiomatic English, or which discovers an 

? Frasefs (London) Magazine, 1833-4. 



2/2 APPENDIX. 

equal mastery over all the riches of the language. The Author 
makes ample amends for the occasional eccentricity of his 
genius, not only by frequent bursts of pure splendor, but by 
the wit and sense which never fail him. 

''" But what will chiefly commend the Book to the discern- 
ing reader is the manifest design of the work, which is, a 
Criticism upon the Spirit of the Age — we had almost said, 
of the hour — in which we live ; exhibiting in the most just 
and novel light the present aspects of Religion, Politics, 
Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his gayety the 
Writer has an earnest meaning, and discovers an insight into 
the manifold wants and tendencies of human nature, which is 
very rare among our popular authors. The philanthropy and 
the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire the work, will 
find their way to the heart of every lover of virtue." — 
Preface to Sartor Resar tics : Boston^ i^35> 183 7» 

Sunt, Fuerunt vel Fuere. 

London i "ioth June 1838. 



SUMMARY. 



BOOK I. 

CHAPTER I. PRELIMINARY. 

No Philosophy of Clothes yet, notwithstanding all our Science. 
Strangely forgotten that Man is by nature a naked animal. The 
English mind ail-too practically absorbed for any such inquiry. Not 
so, deep-thinking Germany. Advantage of Speculation having free 
course. Editor receives from Professor Teufelsdrockh his new 
Work on Clothes, (p. i.) 

CHAPTER II. EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 

How to make known Teufelsdrockh and his Book to English 
readers ; especially such a book ? Editor receives from the Hof- 
rath Heuschrecke a letter promising Biographic Documents. 
Negotiations with Oliver Yorke. Sartor Resartus conceived. 
Editor's assurances and advice to his British reader, (p. 6.) 

CHAPTER III. REMINISCENCES. 

Teufelsdrockh at Weissnichtwo. Professor of Things in 
General at the University there : Outward aspect and character ; 
memorable coffee-house utterances ; domicile and watch-tower : 
Sights thence of City-Life by day and by night; with reflections 
thereon. Old 'Liza and her ways. Character of Hofrath Heu- 
schrecke, and his relation to Teufelsdrockh. (p. ii.) 



274 SUMMARY. 



CHAPTER IV. CHARACTERISTICS. 

Teufelsdrockh and his Work on Clothes : Strange freedom of 
speech ; transcendentalism ; force of insight and expression ; mul- 
tifarious learning: Style poetic, uncouth: Comprehensiveness of 
his humor and moral feeling. How the Editor once saw him laugh. 
Different kinds of Laughter and their significance, (p. 23.) 

CHAPTER V. THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 

Futile cause-and-effect Philosophies. Teufelsdrockh's Orbis 
Vestitus. Clothes first invented for the sake of Ornament. Pic- 
ture of our progenitor, the Aboriginal Savage. Wonders of 
growth and progress in mankind's history. Man defined as a 
Tool-using Animal, (p. 29.) 

CHAPTER VI. APRONS. 

Divers Aprons in the world with divers uses. The Military and 
Police Establishment Society's working Apron. The Episcopal 
Apron with its corner tucked in. The Laystall. Journalists now 
our only Kings and Clergy, (p. 36.) 

CHAPTER VIL MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 

How Men and Fashions come and go. German Costume in 
the fifteenth century. By what strange chances do we live in 
History ! The costume of Bolivar's Cavalry, (p. 39.) 

CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 

Teufelsdrockh's Theorem, "Society founded upon Cloth;" his 
Method, Intuition quickened by Experience. — The mysterious 
question. Who am I ? Philosophic systems all at fault : A deeper 
meditation has always taught, here and there an individual, that all 
visible things are appearances only ; but also emblems and revela- 
tions of God. Teufelsdrockh first comes upon the question of 
Clothes : Baseness to which Clothing may bring us. (p. 43.) 



SUMMARY, 275 



CHAPTER IX. ADAMITISM. 

The universal utility of Clothes, and their higher mystic virtue, 
illustrated. Conception of Mankind stripped naked ; and 
immediate consequent dissolution of civilized Society, (p. 49.) 

CHAPTER X. PURE REASON. 

A Naked World possible, nay actually exists, under the clothed 
one. Man, in the eye of Pure Reason, a visible God's Presence. 
The beginning of all wisdom, to look fixedly on Clothes till they 
become transparent. Wonder, the basis of Worship : Perennial 
in man. Modern Sciolists who cannot wonder : Teufelsdrockh's 
contempt for, and advice to them. (p. 54.) 

CHAPTER XI. PROSPECTIVE. 

Nature not an Aggregate, but a Whole. All visible things are 
emblems, Clothes ; and exist for a time only. The grand scope 
of the Philosophy of Clothes. — Biographic Documents arrive. 
Letter from Heuschrecke on the importance of Biography. Hete- 
rogeneous character of the documents : Editor sorely perplexed ; 
but desperately grapples with his work. (p. 60.) 



BOOK II. 

CHAPTER I. GENESIS. 



Old Andreas Futteral and Gretchen his wife : their quiet home. 
Advent of a mysterious stranger, who deposits with them a young 
infant, the future Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. After-yearnings 
of the youth for his unknown Father. Sovereign power o£ Names 
and Naming. Diogenes a flourishing Infant, (p. 70.) 



^^ 



276 SUMMARY, 



CHAPTER II. IDYLLIC. 

Happy Childhood 1 Eiitepfuhl : Sights, hearings and experi- 
ences of the boy Teiifelsdrockh ; their manifold teaching. Educa- 
tion ; what it can do, what cannot. Obedience our universal duty 
and destiny. Gneschen sees the good Gretchen pray. (p. 78.) 

CHAPTER III. PEDAGOGY. 

Teufelsdrockh's School. His Education. How the ever- 
flowing Kuhbach speaks of Time and Eternity. The Hinterschlag 
Gymnasium: rude Boys; and pedant Professors. The need of 
true Teachers, and their due recognition. Father Andreas dies ; 
and Teufelsdrockh learns the secret of his birth : His reflections 
thereon. The Nameless University. Statistics of Imposture 
much wanted. Bitter fruits of Rationalism : Teufelsdrockh's 
religious difficulties. The young Englishman Herr Towgood. 
Modern Friendship, (p. ^^.) 

CHAPTER IV. GETTING UNDER WAY. 

The grand thaumaturgic Art of Thought. Difficulty in fitting 
Capability to Opportunity, or of getting under way. The advan- 
tage of Hunger and Bread-Studies. Teufelsdrockh has to enact 
the stern monodrama of No object and ito rest. Sufferings as 
Auscultator. Given up as a man of genius. Zahdarm House. 
Intolerable presumption of young men. Irony and its conse- 
quences. Teufelsdrockh's Epitaph on Count Zahdarm. (p. 104.) 

CHAPTER V. ROMANCE. ^ 

Teufelsdrockh gives up his Profession. The heavenly mystery 
of Love. Teufelsdrockh's feeling of worship towards women. 
First and only love. Blumine. Happy hearts and free tongues. 
The infinite nature of Fantasy. Love's joyful progress j sudden 
dissolution J and final catastrophe, (p. 117.) 



SUMMARY, ^ 277 



CHAPTER Vr. SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 

Teufelsdrockh's demeanor thereupon. Turns pilgrim. A last 
wistful look on native Entepfuhl : Sunset amongst primitive 
Mountains. Basilisk-glance of the Barouche-and-four. Thoughts 
on View-hunting. Wanderings and Sorrowings, (p. 130.) 

CHAPTER VII. THE EVERLASTING NO. 

Loss of Hope, and of Belief. Profit-and-Loss Philosophy. 
Teufelsdrockh in his darkness and despair still clings to Truth 
and follows Duty. Inexpressible pains and fears of Unbelief. 
Fever-crisis : Protest agamst the Everlasting No. Baphometic 
Fire-baptism, (p. 140.) 

CHAPTER VIII. CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 

Teufelsdrockh turns now outwardly to the Not-nie ; and finds 
wholesomer food. Ancient Cities : Mystery of their origin and 
growth : Invisible inheritances and possessions. Power and virtue 
of a true Book. Wagram Battlefield : War. Great Scenes 
beheld by the Pilgrim : Great Events, and Great Men, Napoleon, 
a divine missionary, preaching La carriere oitverte atcx talens. 
Teufelsdpckh at the North Cape : Modern means of self-defence. 
Gunpowder and duelling. The pilgrim, despising his miseries, 
reaches the Centre of Indifference, (p. 149.) 

CHAPTER IX. THE EVERLASTING YEA. 

Temptations in the Wilderness : Victory over the Tempter. 
Annihilation of Self. Belief in God, and love to Man. The 
Origin of Evil, a problem ever requiring to be solved anew : 
Teufelsdrockh's solution. Love of Happiness a vain whim : A 
Higher in man than Love of Happiness. The Everlasting Yea. 
Worship of Sorrow. Voltaire : his task now finished. Conviction 
worthless, impossible, without Conduct. The true Ideal, the 
Actual : Up and work I (p. 161.) 



2/8 SUMMARY. 



CHAPTER X. PAUSE. 

Conversion : a spiritual attainment peculiar ^o the modern Era. 
Teufelsdrockh accepts Authorship as his divine calling. The 
scope of the command Thou shall nol sleal. — Editor begins to 
suspect the authenticity of the Biographical documents ; and 
abandons them for the great Clothes volume. Result of the 
preceding ten Chapters; Insight into the character of Teufels- 
drockh : His fundamental beliefs, and how he was forced to seek 
and find them. (p. 173.) 



BOOK III. 

CHAPTER I. INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 

Story of George Fox the Quaker ; and his perennial suit of 
Leather. A man God-possessed, witnessing for spiritual freedom 
and manhood, (p. 182.) 

CHAPTER II. CHURCH-CLOTHES. 

Church-Clothes defined ; the Forms under which the Religious 
Principle is temporarily embodied. Outward Religion originates 
by Society : Society becomes possible by Religion. The condition 
of Church-Clothes in our time. (p. 187.) 

CHAPTER III. SYMBOLS. 

The benignant efiicacies of Silence and Secrecy. Symbols ; 
revelations of the Infinite in the P'inite : Man everywhere encom- 
])assed by them ; lives and works by them. Theory of Motive- 
millwrights, a false account of human nature. Symbols of an 
extrinsic value ; as Banners, Standards : Of intrinsic value ; as 
Works of Art, Lives and Deaths of Heroic men. Religious 
Symbols; Christianity. Symbols hallowed by Time; but finally 
defaced and desecrated. Many superannuated Symbols in our 
time, needing removal, (p. 191.) 



SUMMARY, 27 () 



CHAPTER IV. HELOTAGB, 

Heuschrecke's Malthusian Tract, and Teufelsdr6ckh*s marginal 
notes thereon. The true workman, for daily bread, or spiritual 
bread, to be honored ; and no other. The real privation of the 
Poor not poverty or toil, but ignorance. Over-population : With 
a world like ours and wide as ours, can there be too many men } 
Emigration, (p. 198.) 

.CHAPTER V. THE PHCENIX. 

Teufelsdrockh considers Society as dead ; its soul (Religion) 
gone, its body (existing Institutions) going. Utilitarianism, need- 
ing little farther preaching, is now in full activity of destruction. 
— Teufelsdrockh would yield to the Inevitable, accounting that 
the best: Assurance of a fairer Living Society, arising, Phcenix-like, 
out of the ruins of the old dead one. Before that Phoenix death- 
birth is accomplished, long time, struggle, and suffering must 
intervene, (p. 203.) 

CHAPTER VI. OLD CLOTHES. 

Courtesy due from all men to all men : The Body of Man a 
Revelation in the Flesh. Teufelsdrockh's respect for Old 
Clothes, as the " Ghosts of Life." Walk in Monmouth Street, 
and meditations there, (p. 209.) 

CHAPTER VII. ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 

Destruction and Creation ever proceed together; and organic 
filaments of the Future are even now spinning. Wonderful con- 
nection of each man with all men ; and of each generation with all 
generations, before and after : Mankind is One. Sequence and 
progress of all human work, whether of creation or destruction, 
from age to age. — Titles, hitherto derived from Fighting, must 
give way to others. Kings will remain and their title. Political 
Freedom, not to be attained by any mechanical contrivance. 
Hero-worship, perennial amongst men ; the cornerstone of politics 



28o SUMMARY, 

in the Future. Organic filaments of the New Religion : News- 
papers and Literature. Let the faithful soul take courage! 
(P-214.) 

CHAPTER VIII. NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 

Deep significance of Miracles. Littleness of human Science : 
Divine incomprehensibility of Nature. Custom blinds us to the 
miraculousness of daily-recurring miracles ; so do Names. Space 
and time, appearances only ; forms of human Thought : A glimpse 
of Immortality. How Space hides from us the wondrousness of 
our commonest powers ; and Time, the divinely miraculous course 
of human history, (p. 223.) 

CHAPTER IX. CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

Recapitulation. Editor congratulates the few British readers 
who have accompanied Teufelsdrockh through all his speculations. 
The true use of the Sartor Resartus^ to exhibit the Wonder of 
daily life and common things ; and to show that all Forms are but 
Clothes, and temporary. Practical inferences enough will follow. 
(P- 2350 

CHAPTER X. THE DANDIACAL BODY. 

The Dandy defined. The Dandiacal Sect a new modification 
of the primeval superstition Self-worship : How to be distin- 
guished. Their Sacred Books (Fashionable Novels) unreadable. 
Dandyism's Articles of Faith. — Brotherhood of Poor-Slaves; 
vowed to perpetual Poverty ; worshippers of Earth ; distmguished 
by peculiar costume and diet. Picture of a Poor-Slave House- 
hold ; and of a Dandiacal. Teufelsdrockh fears these two Sects 
may spread, till they part all England between them, and then 
frightfully collide, (p. 239.) 

CHAPTER XI. TAILORS. 

Injustice done to Tailors, actual and metaphorical. Their 
rights and great services will one day be duly recognized, (p. 253.) 



SUMMARY, 281 



CHArXER XII. FAREWELL. 

Teufelsdrockh's strange maimer of speech, but resolute, truth 
ful character : His purpose seemingly to proselytize, to unite the 
wakeful earnest in these dark times. Letter from Hofrath Heu- 
schrecke announcing that Teufelsdrockh has disappeared from 
Weissnichtwo. Editor guesses he will appear again. Friendly 
Farewell, (p. 256.) 



INDEX. 



Action the true end of Man, 138, 141. 
Actual, the, the true Ideal, 172, 173. 
Adamitism, 49. 
Afflictions, merciful, 169. 
Ambition, 91. 
Apprenticeships, 106. 
Aprons, use and significance of, 36. 
Art, all true Works of, symbolic, 196. 

Baphometic Fire-baptism, 148, 149. 

Battle-field, a, 152, 

Battle, Life-, our, 75 ; with Folly and Sin, 

109, 112. 
Being, the boundless Phantasmagoria of, 

45- 

Belief and Opinion, 170, 171. 

Bible of Universal History, 156, 171. 

Biography, meaning and uses of, 65 ; sig- 
nificance of biographic facts, 177. 

Blumine, 121; her environment, 122; 
character, and relation to Teufels- 
drockh, 123; blissful bonds rent 
asunder, 128; on her way to Eng- 
land, 135. 

Bolivar's Cavalry-uniform, 42. 

Books, influence of, 151, 174. 

Childhood, happy season of, 78; early 

influences and sports, 80. 
Christian Faith, a good Mother's simple 



version of the, 87 ; Temple of the, now 
in ruins, 169; Passive-half of, 171. 

Christian Love, 166, 168. 

Church-Clothes, 187; living and dead 
Churches, 189; the modern Church 
and its Newspaper-Pulpits, 221. 

Circumstances, influence of, 81. 

Clergy, the, with their surplices and cas- 
sock-aprons girt-on, 37, 184. 

Clothes, not a spontaneous growth of the 
human animal, but an artificial device, 
2 ; analogy between the Costumes of 
the body and the Customs of the spirit, 
29; Decoration the first purpose of 
Clothes, 32; what Clothes have done 
for us, and what they threaten to do, 
34, 48; fantastic garbs of the Middle 
Ages, 39; a simple costume, 42; tan- 
gible and mystic influences of Clothes, 
43, 51; animal and human Clothing 
contrasted, 47; a Court-Ceremonial 
7ninus Clothes, 52; necessity for 
Clothes, 55; transparent Clothes, 57; 
all Emblematic things are Clothes, 62, 
ii37 ; Genesis of the modern Clothes- 
Philosopher, 70; Character and con- 
ditions needed, 180, 182; George 
Fox's suit of Leather, 183; Church- 
Clothes, 187; Old-Clothes, 209; prac- 
tical inferences, 238. 

283 



284 



INDEX. 



Codification, 58. 

Combination, value of, 117, 259. 

Commons, British House of, 36. 

Concealment. See Secrecy. 

Constitution, our invaluable British, 218. 

Conversion, 173. 

Courtesy, due to all men, 209. 

Courtier, a luckless, 42. 

Custom the greatest of Weavers, 227. 

Dandy, mystic significance of the, 239; 
dandy worship, 242; sacred books, 
243; articles of faith, 245; a dandy 
household, 250; tragically undermined 
by growing Drudgery, 251. 

Death, nourishment even in, 93, 148. 

Devil, internecine war with the, 10, 104, 
148, 161 ; cannot now so much as be- 
lieve in him, 146. 

Dilettantes and Pedants, 60; patrons of 
Literature, iii. 

Diogenes, 186. 

Doubt can only be removed by Action, 
172. See Unbelief. 

Drudgery contrasted with Dandyism, 
245; ''Communion of Drudges," and 

what may come of it, 251. 

Duelling, a picture of, 159. 

Duty, no longer a divine Messenger and 
Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, 
142, 143; infinite nature of, 172. 

Editor's first acquaintance with Teufels- 
drockh and his Philosophy of Clothes, 
5 ; efforts to make known his discovery 
to British readers, 7 ; admitted into the 
Teufelsdrockh watch-tower, 16, 28; 
first feels the pressure of his task, 43 ; 
his bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, 64; 
strenuous efforts to evolve some his- 
toric order out of such interminable 
documentary confusion, 68; partial 
success, 77, 88, 136; mysterious hints, 



177, 206 ; astonishment and hesitation, 
218; congratulations, 236; farewell, 
256. 

Education, influence of early, 82; insig- 
nificant portion depending on Schools, 
89; educational Architects, 93; the 
inspired Thinker, 200. 

Emblems, all visible things, 62. 

Emigration, 202. 

Eternity, looking through Time, 17, 64, 
196. 

Evil, Origin of, 166. 

Eyes and Spectacles, 59. 

Facts, engraved Hierograms, for which 
the fewest have the key, 178. 

Faith, the one thing needful, 142. 

Fantasy, the true Heaven-gate or Hell- 
gate of man, 127, 193. 

Fashionable Novels, 243. 

Fatherhood, 74. 

Feebleness, the true misery, 144. 

Fire, and vital fire, 61, 150. 

Force, universal presence of, 61. 

Fortunatus' Wishing-hat, 229, 231. 

Fox's, George, heavenward aspirations 
and earthly independence, 183. 

Eraser s Magazine, 7, 262. 

Frederick the Great, symbolic glimpse 
of, 70. 

Friendship, now obsolete, 104; an in' 
credible tradition, 145, 204; how it 
were possible, 188, 259. 

Futteral and his Wife, 70. 

Future, organic filaments of the, 214. 

Genius, the world's treatment of, 109. 
German speculative Thought, 3, 11, 23, 

26, 47; historical researches, 31, 65. 
Gerund-grinding, 92. 
Ghost, an authentic, 232. 
God, the unslumbering, omnipresent, 

eternal, 45 ; God's presence manifested 



INDEX. 



285 



to our eyes and hearts, 56; an 

absentee God, 142. 
Goethe's inspired melody, 222. 
Good, growth and propagation of, 85. 
Great Men, 156. See Man. 
GulHbility, blessings of, 98. 
Gunpowder, use of, 34, 159. 

Habit, how, makes dullards of us all, 48. 

Half-men, 162. 

Happiness, the whim of, 167. 

Hero-worship, the corner-stone of all 
Society, 220. 

Heuschrecke and his biographic docu- 
ments, 10; his loose, zigzag, thin- 
visaged character, 21 ; unaccustomed 
eloquence, and interminable docu- 
mentary superfluities, 64; bewildered 
darkness, 260. 

History, all-inweaving tissue of, 17; by 
what strange chances do we live in, 
42; a perpetual Revelation, 156, 169, 
223. 

Homer's Iliad, 197. 

Hope, this world emphatically the place 
of, 141; false shadows of, 163. 

Horse, his own tailor, 47. 

Ideal, the, exists only in the Actual, 172, 
174. 

Imagination. See Fantasy. 

Immortality, a glimpse of, 230. 

Imposture, statistics of, 97. 

Independence, foolish parade of, 205, 220. 

Indifference, centre of, 149. 

Infant intuitions and acquirements, 76; 
genius and dulness, 81. 

Inspiration, perennial, 169, 184, 222. 

Invention, 34, 139. 

Invisible, the. Nature the visible Gar- 
ment of, 47; invisible bonds, binding 
all Men together, 52; the Visible and 
Invisible, 57, 191. 



Irish, the, Poor-Slave, 246. 
Isolation, 94. 

Jesus of Nazareth, our divinest Symbol, 
197, 201. 

King, our true, chosen for us in Heaven, 

218. 
Kingdom, a man's, 106. 
Know thyself, and what thou canst work 

at, 145. 

Labor, sacredness of, 199. 

Land-owning, trade of, 112. 

Language . the Garment of Thought, 63 ; 
dead vocables, 92. 

Laughter, significance of, 27. 

Lieschen, 19. 

Life, Human, picture of, 17, 133, 150, 
164; life-purpose, 117; speculative 
mystery of, 145, 211, 232; the most 
important transaction in, 148; noth- 
ingness of, 160, 161, 

Light, the beginning of all Creation, 172. 

Logic-mortar and wordy Air-castles, 46 ; 
underground workshop of Logic, 5G, 
194. 

Louis XV., ungodly age of, 143. 

Love, what we emphatically name, 118; 
pyrotechnic phenomena of, 118, 194; 
not altogether a delirium, 126; how 
possible, in its highest form, 167, 188, 

259- 
Ludicrous, feeling and instances of the, 
41, 158. 

Magna Charta, 237. 

Malthus's over-population panic, 199. 

Man, by nature naked, 2, 49, 53; essen- 
tially a tool-using animal, 34; the true 
Shekinah, 56; a divine Emblem, 63, 
191, 193, 210, 234; two men alone 
honorable, 199. See Thinking Man. 



286 



INDEX, 



Metaphors the stuff of Language, 63. 

Metaphysics inexpressibly unproduc- 
tive, 46, 51. 

Milton, 144. 

Miracles, significance of, 224, 231. 

Monmouth-Street, and its ** Ou' clo'" 
Angels of Doom, 212. 

Mother's, a, religious influence, 87. 

Motive-Millwrights, 193. 

Mountain scenery, 133. 

Mystery, all-pervading domain of, 60. 

Nakedness and hypocritical Clothing, 
47) 55' ^ naked Court-Ceremonial, 52; 
a naked Duke addressing a naked 
House of Lords, 53. 

Names, significance and influence of, 73, 
228. 

Napoleon and his Political Evangel, 157. 

Nature, the God-written Apocalypse of, 
45, 56; not an Aggegate but a Whole, 
6t , 135, 216, 226 ; Nature alone antique, 
90; sympathy with, 132, 157; the 
" Living Garment of God," 165; Laws 
of Nature, 225, 

Necessity, brightened into Duty, 85. 

Newspaper Editors, 38; our Mendicant 
Friars, 222. 

Nothingness of life, 160. 

Obedience, the lesson of, 86, 218. 

Orpheus, 231. 

Over-population, 198. 

Own, conservation of a man's, 175. 

Paradise and Fig-leaves, 31 ; prospective 

Paradises, 118, 127. 
Passivity and Activity, 86, 141. 
Past, the, inextricably linked with the 

Present, 150; forever extant, 229. 
Paupers, what to do with, 202. 
Peace-Era, the much-predicted, 154. 
Peasant Saint, the^ 201. 



Pelham, and th^ Whole Duty of 

Dandies, 244. 
Perseverance, law of, 208. 
Person, mystery of a, 56, 115, 118, 210. 
Philosophies, Cause and Effect, 30. 
Phoenix Death-birth, 208, 214, 236. 
Property, 175. 
Proselytizing, 7, 258. 

Radicalism, Speculative, 11, '24, 54. 
Raleigh's, Sir Walter, fine mantle, 41. 
Religion, dead letter and living spirit oi, 

loi ; weaving new vestures, 188, 243. 
Reverence, early growth of, 87; indis- 

pensability of, 220, 
Richter, 28. 

Saints, living Communion of, 217, 223. 

Sarcasm, the panoply of, 115. 

Sartor Resartus, genesis of, 6; its pur- 
pose, 235. 

Saturn or Chronos, 113. 

Savage, the aboriginal, 32. 

Scarecrow, significance of the, 54. 

Sceptical goose-cackle, 59. 

School education, insignificance of, 89, 
92 ; tin-kettle terrors and incitements, 
90; need of Soul-Architects, 93. 

Science, the Torch of, i ; the Scientific 
Head, 58. 

Secrecy, benignant efficacies of, 191. 

Self-activity, 23. 

Self-annihilation, 163. 

Shame, divine, mysterious growth of, 34; 
the soil of all Virtue, 192. 

Silence, 157; the element in which all 
great things fashion themselves, 191. 

Simon's, Saint, aphorism of the golden 
age, 208; a false application, 261. 

Smoke, advantage of consuming one's, 
132. 

Society founded upon Cloth, 43, 52, 54; 
how Society becomes possible, i^^; 



INDEX. 



287 



social Death and New-Birth, i8,g, 207, 
214, 236; as good as extinct, 203. 

Solitude. See Silence. 

Sorrow-pangs of Self-deliverance, 132, 
13Q, 140, 141 ; divine depths of Sorrow, 
166; Worship of Sorrow, 169. 

Space and Time, the Dream-Canvas 
upon which Life is imaged, 46, 56, 
223, 229. 

Spartan wisdom, 201. 

Speculative intuition, 45. See German. 

Speech, great, but not greatest, 192. 

Sphinx-riddle, the Universe a, 112. 

Stealing, 175, 201. 

Stupidity, blessings of, 143. 

Style, varieties of, 63. 

Suicide, 147. 

Summary, 273. 

Sunset, 80, 135. 

Swallows, migrations and co-operative 
instincts of, 83. 

Swineherd, the, 81. 

Symbols, 191 ; wondrous agency of, 192 ; 
extrinsic and intrinsic, 195; superan- 
nuated, 198, 204. 

Tailors, symbolic significance of, 253. 

Temptations in the wilderness, 265. 

Testimonies of Authors, 211. 

Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of Clothes, 
4; he proposes a toast, 12; his per- 
sonal aspect, and silent deep-seated 
Sansculottism, 12; thawed into speech, 
16 ; memorable watch-tower utterances, 
16; alone with the Stars, 19; extremely 
miscellaneous environment, 19; plain- 
ness of speech, 24; universal learning, 
and multiplex literary style, 25; am- 
biguous-lookmg morahty, 27; one in- 
stance of laughter, 27; almost total 
want of arrangement, 29; feeling of 
the ludicrous, 41; speculative Radi- 
calism, 54; a singular Character, 65; 



Genesis properly an Exodus, 70; 
unprecedented Name, 75; infantine 
experience, 76; Pedagogy, 87; an 
almost Hindoo Passivity, 88; school- 
boy jostling, 91; heterogeneous Uni- 
versity-Life, 95; fever-paroxysms of 
doubt, loi ; first practical knowledge 
of the English, 102; getting under 
way, 104; ill success, 109; glimpse of 
high-life, 11 1; casts himself on the 
Universe, 117; reverent feeling to- 
wards Women, 119; frantically in love, 
120; first interview with Blumine, 123; 
inspired moments, 124; short of prac- 
tical kitchen-stuff, 129; ideal bliss, and 
actual catastrophe, 130; sorrows, and 
peripatetic stoicism, 131; a parting 
glimpse of his Beloved on her way to 
England, 135; how he overran the 
whole earth, 136; Doubt darkened 
into Unbelief, 142; love of Truth, 144; 
a feeble unit amidst a threatening In- 
finitude, 145; Baphometic Fire-bap- 
tism, 148, 149; placid indifference, 
149; a Hyperborean intruder, 158; 
Nothingness of life, 160; Temptations 
in the wilderness, 161 ; dawning of a 
better day, 164; the Ideal in the 
Actual, 172; finds his true Calling, 
175; his Biography a symbolic Adum- 
bration, significant to those who can 
decipher it, 177; a wonder-lover, 
seeker and worker, 183 ; in Monmouth- 
Street among the Hebrews, 212; con- 
cluding hints, 257; his public History 
not yet done, perhaps the better part 
only beginning, 261. 

Thinking Man, a, the worst enemy of 
the Prince of Darkness, 105, 174; true 
Thought can never die, 216. 

Time-Spirit, life-battle with the, 75, 114; 
Time, the universal wonder-hider. 231, 

Titles of Honor, 218. 






288 



IiYDEX, 



Tools, influence of, 34; the Pen, most 
miraculous of tools, 174. 

Unbelief, era of, 99, 142; Doubt darken- 
ing into, 142; escape from, 162. 
Universities, 96. 
Utilitarianism, 141, 205. 

View-hunting and diseased Self-con- 
sciousness, 136. 
Voltaire, 170; the Parisian Divinity, 22 lo 



War, 149. 

Wisdom, 5'/. 

Woman's influence, 119. 

Wonder the basis of Worship, 58; region 

of, 237. 
Words, slavery to, 46; Word-mongering 

and Motive-grinding, 143. 
Workshop of Life, 174. See Labor. 

Young Men and Maidens, 112, n8. 



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